An Objective View of Michael Jackson

Omer Bhatti. While I had heard his name in connection with Michael Jackson, I never really knew that much about him. Where was he from? How close was he to Jackson? How did they meet? How often, how many times and and for how long did he visit Neverland? I didn’t really know the answers to these questions, so I decided to do some research and find out what I could about Omer and his relationship with Jackson.

What I found really surprised me. I’ll rephrase that. It shocked me. Totally. Here was a man who had, according to his own statements, suffered greatly as a result of his close relationships with boys. He had been accused of child molestation, been forced into a humiliating strip search where his genitals were photographed, and eventually had to pay multi millions of dollars to two families so that they wouldn’t force him into a civil court where they could “tell lies” exposing his alleged sordid behavior with their sons. His health, reputation and fortune were compromised by, if you were to believe him, totally innocent relationships with young boys.

To any observer, it would make sense that a man with the street smarts of Jackson (remembering he had not only survived, but thrived, in the cut throat music business for thirty years), would take great pains to ensure his interactions with children from that point forward were fully accountable and transparent so as to avoid a repeat of the extreme pain that those previous relationships had caused. Like a child bitten by a dog, someone innocently involved with children would have ensured they wouldn’t get into a situation where they may be bitten again. Certainly, Jackson’s advisers and lawyers would have made clear that the consequences of entering into a relationship with any child at the same level as the ones he had previously would have been dire.

Even Jackson’s spiritual adviser, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, told Jackson he should not be friends with children.

After the 1993 allegations, Michael could no longer work with kids. I made that absolutely clear to him. But I also said to him, you’re not the children’s messiah. Their parents are. You’re not supposed to be building these hospitals and reading them bedtime stories. You’re supposed to be inspiring their parents to prioritize them. And Michael embraced that message.

– Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

But had Jackson embraced that message? That is what makes this story fascinating. Was Jackson’s relationship with Omer (and you will find out how intimate their relationship was when you read further) a result of arrogance, naïveté or compulsion?

Nothing creepy here.

Our story begins (if you don’t count Jackson’s previous obsessions with young boys) in October 1996. Jackson was in the midst of the HIStory World Tour and had already performed concerts in Eastern Europe, Spain and the Netherlands. He had now moved on to perform his first ever concert in Africa as a solo artist, in Tunis, the capital of Tunisia. He had divorced Lisa Marie Presley a few months earlier, and Deborah Rowe, his soon to be second wife, was pregnant with their first son Prince. Here was a man who was soon to have a lot of new responsibilities and, I would have thought, not much time for new relationships. He proved me wrong.

Michael Jackson with some young Tunisian friends.

Omer Bhatti, the son of Humayoun, originally from Pakistan who was then 41, and Helga, a native of Norway who was then 42, (they later changed their names), was a short for his age 12 year old who loved everything Jackson – the music, the dancing, and especially the man.

The family traveled from their home in Oslo to Tunis to visit Omer’s uncle Hjalmar Vinje, who was living there at the time. However the main aim of Omer would have been to catch a glimpse of his idol, Michael Jackson.

Like many of Jackson’s other special friends, Omer had been imitating Jackson’s dance moves from an early age and was noticed by music act manager Tor Helgeton as a “tot” in his native Norway. Helgeton organized for Omer to appear at shopping centres and festivals around the country, and he even appeared on Norwegian television stations NRK and TV3 dancing like his idol. At the time he was visiting Tunis, Omer had been scheduled to appear at a shopping center in Arendal, a small town three and a half hours south west of his home in the southern suburbs of Oslo. According to Helgeton, Omer never showed up for the appearance. Was Omer a no show because the lure of the chance of seeing his idol was stronger than his desire to perform at an out of the way retail centre?

How Jackson and Omer’s paths crossed was fortuitous for both of them. Omer got to meet the person he had admired for so long, and Jackson got his very own young boy to live in his home – but more of that later.

As it happened, Omer was at the hotel on that day early in October hoping to catch a glimpse of Jackson – he was dressed as his idol and had diligently worked his way through the crowd so he could be at the front. When Jackson finally arrived at the hotel, the crowd waiting for him surged forward and there was a danger that Omer would be crushed. Jackson spotted he was in peril and instructed his bodyguards to scoop up the hapless young lad to save him from the mass of people wanting to get to Jackson.

However, Jackson didn’t stop at just saving Omer from the crowd, he was eager to get to know this youngster better, and invited the boy up to his hotel room, much as he had done with other young boys so many times before. They talked and played together for a full two hours, and later Omer told his sister Shaista that Jackson had been impressed with how similar Omer was compared to him.

The grooming of Omer had begun. With his usual constant companions Frank and Eddie Cascio getting older (and almost certainly going through puberty), and depressed that he had precious few new boys in his pipeline, Jackson needed to take action. Omer coming into Jackson’s life must have been a godsend.

JACKSON: And every time I felt like I’m at the end of my rope, some kind of way, a kid would show up somewhere. That’s the truth. Just when I can’t take it anymore. And I really want to die. I really do. When I wanted to die, boom, it hits me. And I get on my knees, and I thank God whenever it happens. I do, Shmuley. And so, I believe in it. I really do.

Jackson was obviously taken by Omer, and as he did with Ash in Australia, invited him on to the stage at his concert to perform together with him along with other children. Jackson singled Omer out to stand by him and held his hand during the performance, afterwards inviting Omer and his family for dinner.

Did Jackson proceed cautiously, as someone who had supposedly suffered terribly from accusations of impropriety with a young boy just three years earlier would? No. He proceeded with reckless abandon, inviting Omer, along with his mother and uncle, to continue on the HIStory tour with him. Despite having known Omer for only an extremely short time, in true Jackson fashion he couldn’t let a compliant young boy who had entered into his orbit, with pliable parents, out of his sight just yet.

Things were moving fast. It was only the next day that Jackson started dressing Omer as his ‘mini me”, just as he had enjoyed doing with his other special friends. Jackson chose the distinctive CTE shirt he had used on other special friends before.

How curious that Jackson just so happened have this shirt with him in Tunisia in Omer’s size. Did Jackson carry a supply of these shirts everywhere he went just in case he might come across a boy he liked?

Contrary to news reports, Omer did not join Jackson for the remainder of the HIStory tour. After the Seoul and Taiwan concerts, the Bhattis returned to Norway, and Jackson continued on to Singapore, the next stop on his tour. They joined up again in Tokyo in December, where Jackson enjoyed Omer’s company for a little more time before they parted again.

Omer and Jackson at the Tokyo premiere of the short film Ghosts

However their parting was brief. Jackson, ignoring the mess of trouble his obsession with Jordan Chandler had caused him, invited Omer, along with his family, to come to Neverland to live with him. They readily agreed. Omer returned to Norway to complete year seven at school, and his parents got busy organizing the sale of their Holmlia home. In the fall of 1997, with Omer having completed school and the sale of the house completed, the family moved to the United States.

Jackson organized jobs at Neverland for Omer’s parents. Whilst there is no proof available, it’s quite reasonable to assume that Jackson, as he did with the Robson family, helped the Bhattis to acquire green cards allowing them to stay in the United States (unless Jackson employed them illegally, which is another possibility). Omer’s mother, a dental hygienist, worked for Jackson as his son Prince’s first nanny (along with Grace Rwaramba), while Omer’s father, a taxi driver in his home city of Oslo, was put to work in the garage, tending to Jackson’s fleet of vehicles and occasionally acting as chauffeur.

Obviously the Bhatti parents had no special qualifications in regards to the jobs they took on for Jackson, and Jackson would have had far better candidates for those jobs who resided in the United States without the inconvenience of acquiring green cards (or running the risk of having illegal aliens working for Jackson’s company), so it’s safe to assume that Jackson hired two near strangers from Norway for one reason and one reason reason only – to have their son close. This once again shows the extraordinary lengths Jackson went to to enjoy sleepovers with young boys.

Omer’s sister Shaista, Prince and Omer

The Bhattis, keen to celebrate their new life in the United States, decided to change their names to something far more anglicized, becoming the Winter family. Dad Humayoun Shahzad Bhatti became Riz, Mom Helga Helen Winje became Pia, Omer’s 18 year old sister Shaista became Lisa and Omer himself, in honor of his new mentor and benefactor, took the name Michael Joseph Winter.

It wasn’t long, however, before people were asking questions. Why had Jackson moved a young boy in to Neverland Ranch, when only four years previously he had paid out over twenty million dollars after allegations of molestation with another young boy he had been involved with, Jordan Chandler? Jackson knew how it looked. He had to come up with something to divert suspicion away from a situation that would raise red flags with acquaintances, family, friends and business associates, who still had a keen antenna for Jackson and the appropriateness of his friendships with young boys. His solution was to put about the rumor that Omer was his “secret son”, a result of a one night stand between himself and Omer’s mother. This rumor served two purposes – one, it would satisfy the curiosity of those who wondered at the propriety of a 40 year old man who had a 13 year old boy staying in his house; and two, it would help bolster his almost nebulous heterosexual credentials.

And this was no throwaway, joking line from Jackson about Omer being his son. This was something that was taken quite seriously by many people, including Jackson’s immediate family.

After Jackson’s death, his father Joe said about Omer “I knew Michael had another son – yes, I did. He looks like a Jackson, he acts like a Jackson and he can dance like a Jackson. This boy’s a fantastic dancer – as a matter of fact, he teaches dance.”. Jackson’s brother Jermaine stated, “If Omer’s his son, he’s his son.We won’t deny it. We are going to give him the same love and care that we give Prince and Paris and Blanket. I can’t clearly say if he is Michael’s but I saw this kid around him.”

Roger Friedman had previously written in September 2004 “Last month, when I made queries about Bhatti and his status at Neverland and with Jackson, several insiders insisted Jackson had told them recently that Omer was his biological son. Among those who confirmed they had heard the story of Omer being Jackson’s son are former Jackson employees Marc Schaffel and Stuart Backerman.” (Marc Schaffel being the gay pornographer that Jackson hired, fired, then rehired again – see Brietbart story on the sordid saga here; and Stuart Backerman being Jackson’s PR man).

The deception went even further. Anybody spending time around Jackson and Omer would have also heard Omer repeatedly referring to Jackson as ‘Dad’, as he does numerous times in this video taken in 1997.

Interestingly, those who (inexplicably) want to defend Jackson sharing his bed with children after his boy troubles in 1993 and 1994 use the excuse “Michael Jackson saw nothing wrong with it so he kept on doing it”. This suggests a naïveté, or innocence, in Jackson which is not supported by the level of deceit and cover up that Jackson showed in trying to pass off Omer as something other than the bedmate he truly was. We also have the evidence from Rabbi Shmuley who had warned Jackson after the Chandler scandal about keeping his behavior around children above board.

Omer came to be known as “Little Michael” by employees and visitors at Neverland, in part due to his change of name and in part to continue the fiction that he was Jackson’s son. That Omer shared Jackson’s bed was confirmed by Omer’s friend Ricky Harlow, who stated in a newspaper interview, “Omer would sleep over at Michael’s. They would hang out and watch movies and all that kind of stuff. His parents and his sister stayed in a cottage in a different part of the ranch.”

Ricky added: “Omer sleeping in Michael’s bed would not have been a big deal. It would have been innocent.”

It should be noted that Ricky wasn’t in the room with Omer and Jackson.

Omer was deeply enmeshed in life at Neverland, spending inordinate amounts of time with Jackson and his children.

In 1998 Omer enjoyed Christmas with the Jackson family.

As you can see, Omer wasn’t a casual visitor. Harlow says “There was a real bond between Omer and Michael. Michael was very protective of him and wanted to mentor him.”

It’s believed Omer’s parents returned to Norway in 2001 when Omer was 17, however Omer continued to stay with Jackson at Neverland off and on until November 2003, when he was 19. Along with two Norwegian friends who were visiting him, Omer was present at Neverland when the police raided in November 2003, in connection with the Arviso accusations.

Naturally police were keen to interview Omer about what was found during the search, and whether he knew anything about those items. During the grand jury hearings one of the detectives was asked about Omer’s demeanor while being questioned.

Investigator Jeffrey Ellis testified that when he “broached the subject of pornography,” Bhatti became nervous and “seemed to have trouble forming a sentence. It was almost like a stutter.”

Ellis added that when he asked Bhatti a series of questions about the consumption of wine and alcohol and references to “Jesus Juice,” he saw “that same type of uneasiness in him that I noticed when I started talking to him about pornography.”

After Jackson vowed never to return to Neverland and started his wanderings in Dubai, Ireland and around the United States, Omer couldn’t stay with Jackson any longer. Interestingly, in common with many of his other “special friends”, Jackson had encouraged Omer to become a film maker.

I was supposed to start at film school in Hollywood after high school, but then came the raid on Neverland while we were there.

– Omer Bhatti

While they remained friends and stayed in contact, Omer returned to his native Oslo to build his career as O-Bee, rapper and dancer.

Omer had spent a total of 6 years living intimately with Jackson, sharing the life and bed of a man he had a tight bond to. Nobody, really, outside of Jackson’s inner circle knew how close they were, and most outside that circle who did know of Omer chose to accept the “secret son” ruse, for to believe the alternative was too shocking for words.

When Jackson died in June 2009, Omer was distraught. As soon as he found out the sad news, he flew directly to Los Angeles to be with the Jackson children, and remained with them for two and a half months at Hayvenhurst.

“I am infinitely grateful for everything you taught me, and all the knowledge you shared. You made me who I am today, and I promise to make you proud. Our time together is a treasure in my heart, forever and always. I love you. Can not wait for us to meet again”

– Omer’s dedication at Jackson’s funeral

The “secret son” lie continued to be believed by Jackson’s immediate family – so much so that at Jackson’s funeral, sister Rebbie invited Omer to sit in the front row alongside immediate members of the family during the service, a position no other friend or close associate took. Jackson’s lies took root and bloomed, with media reports across the world afterwards proclaiming Omer as Jackson’s fourth child.

Omer did nothing to dispel those rumors until later, when the pressure for more details became too much. Confiding in a close friend who subsequently passed the tidbit on to the media, Omer said “Michael is not my father. He and I were just very, very close. He was my best friend.”

“Michael always used to say I was like a son to him,” he told the friend. “But my true parents are here in Norway. The reason I was asked to sit with his family at the memorial service is because I was Michael’s closest friend – not because I am his son.”

He also alluded to how intimate their relationship had been, saying, “Michael was such a special person to me and I cannot believe he is gone, I am in total shock. I have lost weight because I cannot eat anything. All I can think about is Michael and how he died.”

Omer once again honored his friend by officially changing his name from Omer Jamal Bhatti to Omer Michael Bhatti in 2010.

To any objective observer, Jackson’s intense relationship with a young boy, a boy who came into Jackson’s life after being pursued and wooed, and who lived under the same roof for years, raises many red flags – especially in light of the accusations against Jackson before and after.

Jackson fans, of course, won’t be listening to the facts but trying to weave Omer into their Jackson “lost childhood” narrative. In any case, for Jackson fans this information will still be here once the scales have been lifted from your eyes.

“How can you persuade us, if we won’t listen?”

– Polemarchus (Plato’s Republic)

It’s also interesting to note that Jackson obviously lied to the man he wanted to learn a better moral path from, as Jackson hadn’t embraced the Rabbi’s message, he had continued on his path of compulsion with young boys.

I found it interesting that while researching this story I was keeping my eyes peeled for any denials from Omer over being molested by Jackson, yet didn’t come across even one in the wealth of resources at my disposal. Omer usually cites “privacy” when asked questions about his relationship with Jackson. If anyone comes across any denials from Omer, please leave them in the comments.

Edit 16 June 2015

One of our favorite commenters, Andreas from Norway, let us know what Omer said in answer to a question about the molestation allegations when he did an interview with Elle in Norway (translation).

“I don’t wish to say too much about it, but I will say Michael in many ways was very innocent. But you can’t expect everybody to have the same view on everything. […] To him certain things was natural and completely innocent, things that not necessarily all people would view the same way.”

– Omer Bhatti

Not exactly a denial, in fact it could be considered that Omer was saying that Jackson thought molestation was natural and innocent. We will wait for more information.

I never really understood the fuzz why everybody speculated that he was MJs son, and why there was such a blown-up confusion. In Norway, where Bhatti lives, as do I, there was a huge media thing. I never really understood why Omer Bhatti wouldn’t just come out and dismiss it. Was it so difficult to say he wasn’t his son? And he didn’t seem to enjoy the attention around it all. He seemed almost touchy about it.

And since he didn’t flat out deny it, and slightly evaded answering it for a long time, a lot of people seemed to think there must be something to it. Why didn’t he want to answer if he was related? Could he be his son? Many speculated. A lot was written.

This article makes a whole lot of sense though.

The whole daddy/son-thing was an elaborate cover-up for their relationship initially. Jackson simply set out the rumor to make it look less suspicious for the public and people around him, and Bhatti was in on the cover-up as a kid. Unfortunately for Omer, it left him in a tricky situation later, when everybody was asking. Why was he sitting in the front row with the family at the funeral?

Omer was nervous that him living 6 years with Jackson as a kid, sleeping in his bed, without them being related after all, was going to make people suspicious, and the secret in the box he still shares with the ghost of Michael was going to be revealed. No wonder he was so touchy about the question when journalists asked him.
______________

I’ll re-post what I wrote in the other Bhatti-thread, since it kind of drowned in all the posts. In case new readers shows up.

This was said in context with the molestation allegations, when he was asked in an interview.

“I don’t wish to say too much about it, but I will say Michael in many ways was very innocent. But you can’t expect everybody to have the same view on everything. […] To him certain things was natural and completely innocent, things that not necessarily all people would view the same way.”

Omer and his family have been notoriously silent about Jackson and what went down. While they have given interviews, they mainly spoke in platitudes or only gave generalized information. They never really spoke about Jackson at all although we do know that every visitor to Neverland had to sign a non disclosure agreement. Lots of people are afraid of being sued – which they can be even if the reveal fairly innocuous details of their time at Neverland.

Thanks for posting that quote from Omer again about the molestation. Not exactly a denial, is it? I’ve added it to the article nevertheless Andreas.

Andreas Moss

Thanks, Mjfacts.

I am not sure if he’s in a denial or not. The comment is a bit strange. When I first read it I thought, wow, thats really really liberal. If one mans concept of pedophilic behavior is just “natural and innocent” to the next, and it could that relative… But I’m not sure what Omer is refering to. If it wasn’t for the fact that he didn’t say this in the context of the molestation charges, it probably would look less odd.

I personally think he suffers from optimism bias. He likes to focus on the side of his relationship with MJ that was positive, that he remembers fondly, and claims he’s an artist (O-Bee) and a dancer because of Michael, and sounds of course awkwardly clichéd when he says that, and so on… and deep inside his head, perhaps represses the idea that he was taken advantage of. Better for his career to continue to miik his connections to MJ. Still it perhaps looks clearer and clearer as he gets older. Its difficult to take that step, I imagine.

Pea

I have argued with a Youtube fan who insisted Omer Bhatti was Jacko’s son. She had even created those ridiculous side-by-side pictures of Omer & distant Jackson relatives to “prove” Omer was a Jackson. Frank Cascio spells out Jacko’s claim of paternity in his book “My Friend Michael”:

Funny is that Frank claims that Jacko could have lied about Omer Bhatti being his son to appease some Arab Sheiks who stressed the importance of family. I don’t know if that’s Frank’s genuine speculation, however; it sounds like B.S. — I think he knew Jacko was up to something with Omer (being a loved boy himself). He also said, interestingly, that the Bhattis coming into his life represented the “yes people” with whom he liked to surround himself.

I personally believe Frank was jealous of Omer — his claim of liking “Little Monkey” rang false to me. He probably was jealous, too, that Jacko & Omer had a little “father-son” scam going. Being a boy aging out of Jacko’s favor, it couldn’t have felt good.

Andreas Moss

Haha. This is pure comic gold, Pea.

From Frank Cascio’s book about Michael, in his own words:

“So in Paris I stayed in my own room and didn’t see Michael for a whole day. The next day he called me to his room. “I’d like to introduce you to someone,” Michael said. “You can call him ‘Little Michael.’”

At some point during the night, Michael pulled me aside and revealed that Little Michael was his son.

Huh? His son? I’d never heard of this child, never seen him, didn’t recall a single reference to him in the ten years I’d known Michael. But in Michael’s world I knew to expect the unexpected. This was just another unpredictable turn. I started laughing, saying, “Are you serious?”

Michael told me that once, on an earlier tour, he’d met a blond Norwegian girl and that he’d had an affair with a fan for the first time. This girl had gotten pregnant, but when she had the baby, she literally went mad, overwhelmed by the notion that she was having Michael Jackson’s baby.

Now, his story went, the mother was in a mental institution. The baby supposedly was adopted by a Norwegian woman named Pia, who was a nurse in the psychiatric hospital, or something like that. He’d been raised by Pia and her husband, Riz Bhatti.

So Michael was in Tunisia, and he heard about a kid who had won some kind of Michael Jackson look-alike dance competition— possibly one of the kids in the crowd outside the hotel. Michael wanted to meet him, so the winner, Omer, was brought up to the hotel room. When Michael saw him, he noticed the similarities in their appearance and wondered if this could be his child from the affair in 1984. Indeed, as fate would have it, he was that very child, or at least, so Michael said.”

(Later in the book)

“Not long after Michael had introduced me to Omer, he’d told me the truth—that Omer wasn’t really his son. His parents were Pia and Riz—the couple who, in Michael’s original story, were his adoptive parents. I didn’t even pretend to be surprised. Omer looked just like Pia and Riz. By way of an explanation, Michael gave me the same reason he’d given for his marriages to Lisa Marie and Debbie Rowe. He needed to show the Saudi prince and the rest of the Arab business world that he had a family. I wasn’t sure how discovering a long-lost illegitimate son boosted Michael’s image with bin Talal, but that was his story”

________

I don’t know which version I find the funniest.

The one where a norwegian girl, he was supposedly having an affair with, was put into a mental institution as she went mad for having MJs son because she was so overwhelmed, and that later this son magically won a MJ dance contest in Tunisa and met him… Or that he somehow needed to give the impression that he had a son, to please the Arab Business world and some arabian prince, sheik or whatever?

Anyway, I especially enjoy the megalomanic touch of his cover-up stories. He was a true entertainer.

Pea

Thanks for posting them completely, Andreas. I was too lazy. 🙂

When I read Frank’s book, I also thought it was amusing that he pretty much said that he was informed by Jacko himself that Jacko’s marriages were fake — this tends to explain why they were so brief. But I’m not seeing why Jacko would need to procure a random boy from a far away land to be his “son”, to appease a family oriented Sheik, when he had a new baby on the way?

This Paris meeting would’ve been June 1997, according to the HIStory tour schedule, so he had the baby & the wife… Why tell Frank about a secret son? I think Jacko was just covering his own hide — he got Omer, crafting an elaborate story, and didn’t want anyone to know about what he was up to. Poor bin Talal getting the blame for Jacko’s pedo-sneakiness!

Andreas Moss

I recently read Raymond Chandlers “All That Glitters”, and if you’re interested in what really went on with the Chandlers, and everything leading up to the settlement, the myths about it being an extortion and so on, its recommendable. Its written from Evan Chandlers point of view, but you get to know Jordy and June too. I got answered most questions I had about that case.

I actually also learnt a lot about Michael Jackson with this book, how he thinks, how he mixed that innocent childlike sweetheart persona with a hidden and almost disturbingly calculated mind. Nothing Michael did was a coincidence, even if he perhaps seemed to act like otherwise. He was always thinking many many many steps ahead all the time, wether it was business related, or “otherwise”, like with these boys. It was for example Michael that orchestrated the ideas that Evan was only after money, and it only being extortion, when he was trying to protect his son. He played Evan against the mother brilliantly, according to later reflections of Evan.

But most of all I learnt about Evan Chandler, who I must say, was a quite fascinating person himself.

Yes, all the books thats not pro-Jackson usually has very low ratings on Amazon. Many of the reviews don’t even try to pretend they’ve even read the books.

The book I am most curious about is the Victor Gutierrez book. For those who didn’t know it was pulled off the market quite quick, so its incredibly rare, but its possible to get a used copy for around 100$. Does anyone have this book? And what is it about?

Guiterrez seems like a very strange person to me, because on one hand, he allegedly was the main source of Diane Dimond’s work as a reporter, and was seemingly often the very first to dig up exclusive stuff on Michael, things known today, and supposedly he was highly credible, at least according to Dimond.. but on the other hand he also talked about a strange secret diary by Jordy, that I am not sure if exists, and the diary supposedly claims he was deeply in love with Jackson(which is definitely not the story Raymond Chandlers tell, where Jordy never wanted to visit his mothers house because of the bad memories of the molestations there), which all sounds very weird to me… There’s also supposedly another quite shocking story where Guitierez claimed he had a sex tape with Jackson and a boy, and he was prepared to show it to the public. I have only read about this story on the Pro-Jackson vindication sites though, so I don’t know how much of it that is true, if any, but they claim Dimond reported about this tape briefly, but it somehow never appeared, and the story was left hanging mysteriously. If anybody knows anything about this, I’d love to know more. The only sites online that talks about him is the Jackson fan sites, which is a shame.

(Dang, this post was meant as a reply to Kat’s book question, not to you Pea, sorry.)

ShawntayUStay

The secret diary angle was just that — an angle used to sell books. And it worked, because his book was flying off the shelves at gay bookstores in West Hollywood, according to reports. His secret diary was nothing more than a shitload of research, including conversations with the actual Chandlers (who likely had zero idea that this dude was going to spend the tale that it was a man-boy love story and that evil Daddy Evan broke it up for money :-P).

VG is a very strange gay man who very clearly has no real problem with inter-generational relationships between males, and so was/is sympathetic to MJ’s pedophilia affliction. He claims he’s been looking into MJ’s “boy issues” since the 1980s, but I don’t know if that is true or not. And he has credibility problems because of the secret tape he couldn’t produce. Fans make a big deal about MJ (rightfully) suing VG for the tape, but they conveniently ignore the fact that he specifically did not sue over the book. Unlike the tape — which any judge would demand to be produced even thought the law in America against slander/libel puts the onus of proving slander/libel on the shoulders of the plaintiff — the book was mass produced and readily available, so Jackson would have had to prove that VG had maliciously made up everything in that book. And he’d have to prove that by demonstrating that he was innocent, and we all know that MJ paid a HUGE amount of money to never ever having to do that in a court of law, and he still plead the 5th when asked about his relationship with boys. So suing over the book’s most libelous contents was never going to happen.

Fans have really “poisoned the well” when it comes to Victor Gutierrez, to the point that even people who think MJ was guilty give him the side-eye glance. But smart, objective people realize it is the height of folly to summarily dismiss the work of a person because of what someone else says about them without ever evaluating the work’s merit on your own. But many people aren’t smart or objective or both, and have thus discredited VG a priori. Many fans are dumb and lazy, LOL.

Andreas Moss

Thanks so much for the input Shawntay!

So the secret diary part is revealed in the book to not exist? Or does he portray that it does exist in his book?

I thought MJ did sue him for the book, and that it was pulled from the market? If thats not true, why is it so rare? I also heard MJ had all the copies bought and trashed?

My impression is that its an incredible well researched book, and that he was extremely skilled as researcher and detective, and probably did a lot of the dirty work of what Dimond got credited for reporting about MJ over the years, but the book gives a very strange flavor, even to MJ realists, as he seems to be quite pro-pedophilia, or at least pro man-boy relationships. If the fan sites are reporting somewhat honest, and they might be in this case, he was also seen in the back of many conferences on several NAMBLA meetings. (It seems however he was there more as a reporting fly on the wall. He was probably everywhere.) Victor also could tell that NAMBLA, who interestingly had no problems seeing that MJ was “one of them”, planned to use MJs relationship to garner public acceptance for man/boy-relationships. 🙂

Oh, and what part of Stacy Browns writing do you consider to be tabloid BS or lazy?

ShawntayUStay

No, he was never sued for the book. He was sued only for the type, and the books were later confiscated only to satisfy the debt he owed to MJ for losing the lawsuit. And they only were able to confiscate the books that Gutierrez owned, NOT any books that were in bookstores, because those books are purchased by merchants and become their property. MJ may have had his people go and buy up those books; it’s a common practice for celebrities to by up “bad press” at the newsstands.

And VG pretends in the book that there was a diary, but we know there isn’t one. At best, the diary was really Evan’s chronology because it was dated like a diary, but again that was a 40 page doc prepared for his lawyers in 1993.

You are very astute, Andreas, and I’ve believed the same thing: VG’s research was the first, but since he has been discredited because of the video tape, people use his research without proper attribution, which is fucked up, IMO. But credibility is lifeblood for journalists, so he was radioactive and once “friends” now kept their distance (do you see Di Dimond ever talking about Gutierrez?? Nope). J Randy Taraborrelli is an egregious example of flagrant plagiarism of VG’s work. He didn’t write anything about the Chandler scandal until 2003, but having previously read Victor’s book, I knew which parts were ripped off. Gutierrez brought to the people that Michael Jackson had those perverted “wishes” he said to Jordie:

1)No wenches, bitches, heifers, or hos;

2)Never give up your bliss;

3)Live with me at Neverland forever;

4)No conditioning;

5)Never grow up;

6)Be better than best friends

(GOD MJ was pervert, LOL). Taraborrelli straight up copied this and a lot of other things as MJWML was the most thorough book written about 1993 at the time. And all Taraborrelli said about Gutierrez was that he was a little known journalist that had to file bankruptcy over the tape and fled to Chile never to be seen again. My thinking is that he got all of this from Dimond.

I don’t know if VG is a NAMBLA member, there is no proof and he has never claimed he was one, just that he went undercover at meetings (this can’t be verified as well), which is when he heard them allegedly talking about Jackson. That’s fan mumbo-jumbo IMO, because they claim that since NAMBLA is secretive, only members can go to meetings but cops have went undercover before — all VG had to do was pretend. As I said, Gutierrez is just a weird gay guy that doesn’t think man-boy love is that bad — he’s really no different from Allen Ginsberg, famed gay Beat poet that attended and performed boylove poems at a 1989 NAMBLA convention because he thought pedos should have rights and was sympathetic (add to that William S. Burroughs, famed Beat/Post-modernist author of “Naked Lunch”, who lived in Morocco for a time at a brothel and paid two 8 yr old boys to have sex with each other while he watched). But neither him nor Gutierrez (nor Burroughs) are pedophiles.(And for any dumbasses reading this, I’m not equating gays with pedophiles so STFU :-P)

Fans always talk about VG/NAMBLA trying to normalize pedophilia by “targeting” MJ, but that is BS. As was said in the Cult post on this site, fans are so delusional to think that MJ’s celebrity status is so huge that he could single-handedly get people to be okay with sleeping with kids…it boggles the mind!

About Stacy Brown, I mean he is a tabloid journalist so his research leaves much to be desired. I know he was close to Rebbie Jackson and her husband Nate Brown, and Jermaine Jackson as well, so he he is an insider. But the stuff he doesn’t know he fills in with rumor and innuendo. In the book, which I haven’t read in a while, I just remember him copying stuff from the Smoking Gun website, some ABC articles, etc, word for word almost. That’s lazy IMO.

Jackson fans absolutely HATE this documentary and have attacked it mercilessly (for example, see vindicatemj.wordpress.com/?s=peretti) because it contains a lot of material that is a) true and b) very damning of Jackson’s behavior.

It’s interesting and I’d like to see a few comments on it from those who watch it.

Kat

I watched the documentary a while ago and thought it was trashy and tabloid-like, but that it simultaneously contained a lot of accurate information, hehe. The accuracy can be confirmed, because several other sources have attested to the same information – I’ve heard many times that MJ himself planted those wacko stories in the press and Paul Anka wrote that he was indeed in The Mirage Hotel partying with boys, while back in Neverland his property was being searched in connection to new molestation charges.

I appreciated the exclusive interviews with Bob Jones and Victor Guiterrez that are part of the documentary; it’s pretty clear from what Jones says that he knows about Jackson’s sexual proclivities and what went on with him and Jordie Chandler, even if he refuses to admit it openly.

Bob Jones knows, totally. He was a witness for the prosecution at the 2005 trial but severely flubbed it. Later he said that he got on the stand, saw Jackson (The King) and suddenly felt sorry for him. He felt he didn’t want to hurt poor Michael.

That gives us an insight into Jackson and the feelings he engendered in those around him. His aura wasn’t green or blue, it was “pity party”, where he was the ever suffering victim that all these bad things happened to not because of his own actions (which it really was) but because those big mean baddies around him made his life hell. Yeah, right.

Kat

Frank’s book was crap anyway. I found it to be highly suspect and implausible in many places. Especially by the end of the book where he seems to be either only telling half of what happened or straight out fabricating things. For someone who knew MJ better than anyone as Frank himself said you would expect him to reveal exclusive insider knowledge and tell us who the real Michael was, but he doesn’t do that. Instead he recycles the old stories about how he had no relationships with women because he was ‘shy’ and that he used drugs to help with his ‘back pain and sleeping problems’, and that half of what we heard about his was media spin anyway. He also refuses to address pressing questions, such as the 2005 trial where he was named as one of the co-conspirators and a person to who’s name Jackson’s drugs were prescribed to. He simply blames everything on those dastardly scammers Arvizos! They held themselves hostage in Neverland!

But the book is peppered with indicators that he was a victim of MJs boy-loving ways. He reveals he has spent more than a hundred nights in Jackson’s bedroom and that he, like other boys, were in the Applehead Club. Maybe one day Frank will come clean about the true nature of his relationship with Jackson and then tell a more honest story.

Actually, I wanted to ask you (and, in fact, all of you) – what is the best book written about Michael Jackson? Like, the one that gives a real insight into his life and who he was as a person? Two books one Amazon stand out – one written by Christopher Andersen and the other by Bob Jones. Those two have low rankings and are dismissed as ‘tabloid junk’. And you can immediately tell that they’re good books when fans call them that, lol. Everyone knows they’re in denial about who he really was.

Kat, I haven’t read Frank’s book yet, apart from a few excerpts. Those excerpts I did read seemed like an ode to a lover – the scene where Frank is driving through France (?) and hears about Jackson’s death and starts to tear up, remembering all the good times he had with Mike, seemed like he had some kind of yearning.

An odd thing too, he seems to minimise the role Omer played in Jackson’s life, as if Omer was but a brief part of it. We know this isn’t true, because Omer was at Neverland for 6 years, but we do know that Frank was at the end of his useful life with Jackson when Omer appeared. As one of his staff said about Jimmy when he hit puberty – “Too old, too old”.

The likely explanation is that Frank didn’t really know that much about Omer. We know from the testimony at the trial of Jackson’s other special friends Mac, Wade and Brett that each boy was deliberately kept apart from the other boys in Jackson’s life. He kept them all compartmentalized for some reason and there was very little contact between them all. It was as if Jackson was the sun and his boys were all the little planet in his orbit – and it was Jackson, like the sun, who decided which orbit they would take and when they could be close to, or further away from, him depending in how he wanted to manipulate them.

Did Frank say he spent over 100 nights in Jackson’s bedroom, or in Jackson’s bed?

As far as the best book to read, I would suggest reading as many as you can – yes, even the one by Aphrodite Jones – and get what you can out of them. Some books are better than others, but the more you read the more you can appreciate who is telling the truth and who is making up lies (or making excuses).

I enjoyed Man Behind The Mask by Bob Jones and Stacy Brown, Be Careful Who You Love by Diane Dimond and All That Glitters by Ray Chandler. I’d like to read Christopher Andersen’s book next.

ShawntayUStay

Frank (or his ghostwriter) conveniently wrote the whole bed-sharing thing as if it was just he and Eddie staying in MJ’s room, on the floor. He very carefully steered away from saying he was in Jackson’s bed. Interesting, right, especially given the narrative that sleeping in bed with boys is no big deal, that it’s about milk and cookies and soft music, or rekindling lost childhood. Also funny was how Frank talks about all of this and in the next paragraph is juxtaposing it with MJ being lovers with some of his female fans and “Emily” and another “long time friend”. Again, very curious! Why mention MJ’s purported heterosexuality if it wasn’t for the simple fact you are trying to defuse the situation of MJ always having young boys in his room?

Frank’s book is enraging in its pathetic lies, LOL. And he only minimized Omer because he was jealous. Remember how James Safechuck said he was feeling jealous over Brett Barnes’ encroachment; same thing Frank was feeling because he knew that MJ bestows attention on his current fave, to the exclusion of all others (although, MJ probably needed to maintain his boy harem after all the scandals would make it hard for him to get new ones). To quote Will Smith in “Men In Black”, Frank was “old and busted” while Omer was the “new hotness”…crude, but it goes so well how narcissistic and objectifying this fetish, pedophilia, is. He repeatedly says how the Cascios were MJ’s one-and-only adopted family, but MJ didn’t move the Cascios into Neverland, did he? Frank is a sad co-dependent.

Kat

The specific quote from the book would be this:

‘The bottom line: Michael’s interest in young boys had absolutely nothing to do with sex. I say this with the unassailable confidence of firsthand experience, the confidence of a young boy who slept in the same room as Michael hundreds of times, and with the absolute conviction of a man who was Michael interact with thousands of kids. In all the years that I was close to him, I saw nothing that raised any red flags.’

It’s an interesting passage, you have to agree, because Frank claims that MJ had no sexual interest in kids virtually in the same sentence in which he reveals that he spent more than a hundred nights in his room as a child! Well, that’s something! 😀

There are other curious places in the book where Frank seems to contradict himself as well as to give out indications that he too was Michael’s special friend for some time. He writes that Jackson was definitely into women, and then later openly admits that his marriages to Lisa Marie and Debbie were shams and everyone knew it. The part where he mentions Omer didn’t stand out as remarkable to me, but he does say at one point that when MJ married Lisa, it changed the dynamic between him and Michael.

‘By this point, Lisa and I had gotten to know each other. She was more comfortable around all of us. Having her around shifted my relationship with Michael – how could it not? I no longer stayed in his room with him at Neverland. But I was fine with that. I liked staying in the bungalows, and I was open to whatever Michael wanted. I never had the sense that I was losing him in any way.’

Frank also implies that Lisa was jealous of the Cascio family and that Jackson much rather preferred to be with the Cascio boys than with her, and that it added to them divorcing. Like I said, Frank keeps a lot of what really happened to himself, but he can’t help to give out clues about the true nature of his and MJs relationship.

ShawntayUStay

It makes you think: why would Frank mention jealousy surrounding Lisa Marie? It’s like he’s boasting that he and MJ are closer, which is true, but…It’s very strange. Clearly the grooming got in the way of logic when he wrote the book; if I was to make MJ look normal, I’d keep the possessiveness at bay and not try to make it known that MJ’s relationship with a boy was anything that would make his wife jealous, or that he preferred the boy over the wife (which is obvious but still, keep it a secret!). But with Michael Jackson, it’s pretty difficult to keep his bizarre-o world underwraps, it’s integral to who he was.

So Frank says “in the same room” rather than “in the same bed”. How interesting that he minimized it like that. A stronger repudiation would have been if he said that he slept in bed with Jackson and nothing happened, wouldn’t you agree? That’s what Wade and Brett said in 1993 in interviews. Brett did say however that it was “a really big bed” 🙂

Also interesting that he said he didn’t feel like he was “losing” MJ. I know you can lose a friend after they get married, but Frank was still on the property and presumably interacting with Jackson very frequently, so why would he need to make such a defensive remark? Curious, and a bit of a giveaway.

And why would LMP be jealous of the Cascio boys if Jackson wasn’t giving them an inordinate amount of attention? It’s obvious their marriage was a sham.

Neely

May I ask your opinion on the Aphrodite Jones book? Is it believable, and if not, what do you believe was the agenda?
Thanks!

I found it gushing, and Aphrodite skimmed over or ignored most of MJ’s behavior with boys. When you do that, it’s easy to say “Michael Jackson was innocent”. She also worked with Tom Mesereau on the book, and just as he did with Randall Sullivan, he convinced her that the 2005 trial was about some grifters trying to get money out of MJ and not the culmination of MJ’s decades long obsession with young boys.

During the trial she was adamant Jackson was guilty, yet changed her mind not immediately after the announcement of the not guilty verdicts but after traveling to Neverland and talking to fans at the gate. This suggests she saw some money to be made in writing a positive book about MJ.

She must have doubts though. When asked about the 1993 case in a radio interview year before last, she said

Do I have doubts about the innocence in 1993? YES. I do. Why? Why….because I watched the testimony of June Chandler in the court in Santa Maria, Jordy Chandler’s mother, and was, how shall I put it? Ummmmm…unnerved by what she was saying. She was talking about Michael staying in the hotel room with Jordy, Michael sleeping over at her house with Jordy, about Michael crying if he couldn’t stay in the same room with Jordy. This is all part of testimony at the trial. It was very unnerving and I felt like he was in love with that boy and whether or not there was any more to it, obviously we’ll never know, but everything that his mother was testifying to, when I was reading between the lines, made me very uneasy.”

Nevertheless, I suggest reading everything you can out there and then make up your own mind.

ShawntayUStay

I second what MJFacts said — you have to read a lot of books in order to understand MJ. If you just stick with “fan approved” books, you’ll just think that MJ was this flowery idealist who was just too good for this world. But skeptic books only focus on his pedophile behavior and his manipulation. I think one can have both dark and light sides so the goal is balance when researching him. A good place to start is the Jetzi website; they have uploaded a lot of magazines and books, both good and bad.

I’m biased (obviously) but the best books written about Jackson are:

1) “Michael Jackson Unauthorized”, by Christopher Andersen, in large part because he was the editor at People magazine and has written legitimate biographies on many celebs, so he has credibility in his research. What I liked most about it was that he found a lot of stuff regarding his “proclivities” before anyone else — even so-called “official” unofficial biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli. He had information about the settlement talks, how the Jackson defense team had tried to strong-arm Transamerica (MJ’s insurance carrier) to foot the bill for the settlement, and pointed out that it was precluded by law for insurance carriers to be obligated to pay for criminal acts. So after reading that part you realize that the whole “MJ was forced to settle by his insurance company” argument is IMPOSSIBLE. I read this book when I was in the hinterland between fan and skeptic, so the truths in it made me have to put the book down because I was getting sad, LOL. But this is, legit, one of the best. Get the first edition hardcover if you can.

2) Michael Jackson Was My Lover: The Secret Diary of Jordie Chandler, by Victor Gutierrez. Fans hate, hate HATE VG but he researched the hell out of his book. It’s one of the rarest but it’s also one of the best, particularly due to its laser focus on the 1993 allegations. He definitely talked to the Chandlers because there are exclusive docs in the book that are private and confidential, including bank statements and letters from the Chandler lawyers. (I think VG was disarming; he was an unknown Chilean journalist so the Chandlers probably felt he was “safe” to talk to.) Fans have launched an all out war against VG, saying that he’s a N A M B L A member and a pedo, and one of these masterminds behind pinning MJ as a pedophile along with Di Dimond and Sneddon, et al (All of this, BTW, is based upon the yarns of a currently imprisoned pedophile/pathological liar named Rodney Allen… google if you want to read fan conspiracy theories, LOL).

The beauty of VG is that he just didn’t give a flying fig who he offended, he was going to tell the story the way it was, warts and all. He didn’t make Evan Chandler out to be a guileless father in over his head trying to protect Jordie from an evil predator, but rather a savvy and shrewd parent who figured MJ’s sexual attraction to his son could pay off big, if he played his cards right (he didn’t, LOL). I’m not saying that VG’s account of Evan is 100% the way he was, but I do think there is an element of smarminess with regard to how the whole thing was handled, even looking at the affair from an objective standpoint. But one thing about VG: he does present it as a “love affair” that was broken up by cruel Daddy Evan. It’s rather ridiculous and a little off-putting; example the “Privacy in Monaco” chapter, where he alleges this was in a “diary” (FYI there is no diary; a lot of the info is from a chronology prepared by Evan Chandler for his attorneys), and proceeds to describe a sex act between MJ and Jordie. Again, you have to take these attempts at “pedo romance writing” with a grain of salt (and a bit of Pepto-Bismol, LOL).

All in all, really really worth getting, IMO.

3) “All That Glitters: The Crime and the Coverup”, by Ray Chandler. This is the “peas” to VG’s “carrots”; the two books tell the same story from slightly different vantage points. Obviously Ray is going to portray Evan in a sympathetic light, but the real goodness is that he fills us in with all the stuff that happened before the raid on Neverland and the story broke in the media — basically the important information that helps us understand the grooming done by MJ on Jordie and his parents. Personally, I find Ray Chandler a bit on the slick side, with some of his comments he’s made as the Chandler spokesman, but this is one of the only books about 1993. Period. So it must be read.

4) “Be Careful Who You Love”, by Diane Dimond. She was strangely very fair to MJ is this book which gives it legitimacy. She’s a veteran MJ detective, LOL, so this is a “must read” book. She reprints a lot of sections from Evan Chandler’s chronology, so that alone makes it worth a look. I love when she honestly says that if Jordie was molested, Evan Chandler sure made a muck of things, with is important because it shows objectivity.

You can also read Bob Jones’s book, but remember Stacy Brown, his co-author, is a very lazy researcher so he rehashes a lot of tabloid BS as filler. But it’s a good one, definitely. Also “Dangerous Liaisons” by boy-lover Carl Toms is a good one too because as the old adage says, “It takes one (a pedo) to know one (another pedo)” — Toms suffers from pedophilia so he’d recognize the traits in MJ. This book has been denigrated by fans (obviously) and some so-called “realists”/people-that-get-off-trolling-fans-and-don’t-care-about-MJ, for the same reason: they’ve never read the book. Even though Toms is a pedo, he is actually highly skeptical about the allegations and thinks that the Arvizo case was bollocks. The good thing about the book is the end notes because he sites his sources and where to find them; the bad thing about the book is that it does contain a smattering of repugnant pedo talking points…luckily not enough to ruin the quality of his research and analysis, and it can be easily skipped over. I wouldn’t say it’s a “must read” but still very interesting.

Kat

Thanks for the list, Shawntay, I agree with all books you named – definitely obligatory reading for those who want to understand both the allegations against Jackson and the man himself. I also agree that you should read as much as you can to have all information that is out there and to decipher the fact from fiction the best you can. However, I have read certain books that have been written with the agenda to prove that MJ was 100% Peter Pan and 0% pedo (such as Emily Herbert’s ‘King of Pop’), and been fooled by them. Only recently, when I became more interested in learning the truth about the pedophilia allegations, I discovered that Jackson was very much the opposite of the charitable, loving, friend to all children, victim of extortionists persona that is pushed by those books.

I would love to get my hands on the Victor Gutierrez book! But I know it’s very rare and expensive, and I don’t feel like spending a hundred dollars on a book. I know that the book is inflammatory in many respects, and that the premise of the book in itself is provocative. After all, it’s written as a sexy love story between a child and an adult, sort of like Nabokov’s ‘Lolita’. With Jordie being Lolita and Michael Jackson being Humbert Humbert up until Jordie’s evil father breaks them up… I don’t know why Gutierrez is sympathetic toward pedophiles, maybe because he’s gay and not that long ago gay men were put into prisons and thought to be mentally ill? Gutierrez probably thinks that after fifty, hundred years, people will have changed their minds about pedophilia and will be accepting toward is as they are now accepting homosexuality. The ‘super secret diary’ that Jordie was supposedly writing I’m sure never existed. It was just a ploy to sell the book. If Jordie would have been keeping records of his relationship with MJ they would have landed in law enforcement’s possession, I am certain. The videotape of Jackson molesting his nephew and the drawing of MJs penis that Jordie allegedly drew and that was in the book were also fabrications, in my opinion. Nothing more than added salaciousness to increase already salacious accounts. 🙂

Pea

The drawing in “Michael Jackson Was My Lover” is real — it just isn’t by Jordie Chandler but by his father. The drawing also contains some notes about Jacko’s skin and Brett Barnes. It was made October 24th.

Jordie Chandler gave a description and made a drawing September 1st when they were still under the helm of Gloria Allred. Then, sometime in December, according to Ray Chandler, Larry Feldman requested that Jordie give another drawing because the Los Angeles DA’s office was making a big ado about Jacko’s supposed skin disease, and that vitiligo spots could change in appearance, thus rendering any drawing Jordie made possibly moot, even if was accurate at some point in time.

Crucially, Jordie would be making any drawing — in Sept. and Dec. — based purely on memory, as he’d likely not seen Jacko’s penis since early July.

Evan’s drawing in MJWML recorded Jacko as “circumcised” — well, supposedly Jacko is “uncircumcised”, according to the autopsy report but I’m skeptical because the coroner stated: “The penis appears uncircumcised.” That indicates to me that Jacko probably didn’t have the typical foreskin that one associates with uncircumcised penises, but the variety where the glans are exposed when the penis is flaccid.

Because there are scientifically classifiable varieties (as I’d seen in some study — I can’t find the link but I wrote the descriptions down):
– short: foreskin opening between the corona & corona sulcus (or just below the head but not quite at the shaft)
– medium: foreskin opening located somewhere between the urethral opening and corona
– long: completely covering the head & possibly extending beyond it.

So, it’s possible Jacko had short foreskin, which would explain the coroner’s seemingly ambivalent “appears”.

I’ve read Carl Toms’ book as well. I found it quite a mixed bag. It is divided up into chapters, with a few chapters about Michael Jackson, then a chapter in support of pedophilia, then a few more chapters about Jackson, then another chapter in support of pedophilia. While at first it’s a bit jarring, it does serve a purpose. While I could never agree with Toms’ views on pedophilia and his support for sexual relationships between men and boys, it did open my eyes as to why Jackson would have thought his activities with boys was OK.

For instance, Toms argues that boys get loving, mentoring and encouragement from pedophiles that they would never get from their parents. Note how Jackson wanted to mentor Jimmy, Wade, Jordan and Omer in the art of film making. We can also assume Jackson did the same with Jonathan Spence as he is also involved in film. So Jackson felt he had a positive effect on his special friends and that’s how he rationalized using them for his own sexual gratification.

Toms correctly identifies Jackson as a caring pedophile, one who “loves” boys and would never hurt them physically. As Shawntay said, it takes one to know one. So that’s the main takeaway I got from Dangerous Liaisons.

Just as an extension of this post, here are some interesting comments I found on Carl Toms’ book.

ShawntayUStay

Omer Bhatti was a “kept boy”, plain and simple. He bewitched MJ (knowingly or unknowingly…the jury’s still out) and MJ took the bait, skirting all notions of reason and morality to bring this kid and his family to Neverland. How can it not be the work of a boy-desperate pedophile? But I wonder how much of this relationship was 1) known to Omer’s parents and 2) if known, how active were they in the arrangement. Because one would hope that parents would be aware of the possible risks they are putting their son in with a man that paid so much money to sweep molestation accusations under the rug!

It’s an ugly thought but the Bhattis could have “greased the wheel” in this relationship; I doubt any parents that have previously put their son in the entertainment business would be so naive. Fact is stranger than fiction, so the notion of “parental pimps” is not out of left field in the slightest (sadly). I don’t think anyone can truly imagine the types of rewards and opportunities being presented to the Bhatti family in exchange for friendship with the King of Pop… it’s pure seduction at its finest. Remember how hard it still is to imagine, for many people, that the talented young black boy from Gary, Indiana — who became one of the most famous entertainers in music history, with access to every beautiful person he could dream of — was a pedophile. So one shouldn’t immediately discredit the idea of Omer’s parents using MJ’s attraction to their son for their own benefit. This is Hollyweird after all. Case in point, I remember Riz Bhatti saying that he was Omer’s stepdad and not dispelling outright the “Omer is MJ’s secret son” lie. He played along…why, if not for his own benefit??

Pea

If the descriptions of how Jacko and Omer met are true, it’s not a stretch of the imagination at all that the Bhattis were ‘seeking out’ Jacko. It’s a bit too serendipitous and almost like the magical story of lovers ‘fated’ to be together: Omer misses his scheduled dance performance to jet off to Tunisia where Jacko is; the boy is in the crowd hoping to capture Jacko’s attention by dressing like him; he’s almost trampled by the sea of fangirls with vaginas that Jacko of course has zero interest in; and Omer, like a damsel, is saved by Jacko’s people before he’s crushed, all the while capturing the heart of Jacko. And the rest is HIStory.

(Did Riz & Pia tell this story to reporters? It reads like a tongue-in-cheek description of Jacko and their son falling in love.)

The other version is even more suspect: Omer, dressed in his Jacko-clothes, loitering around in Jacko’s hotel lobby waiting to see him, and upon viewing Omer, Jacko is apparently immediately smitten and then never lets the boy out of his sight for the next few years, covering up his little lapse in self-control by claiming Omer was his ‘son’.

It almost seems like the Bhattis had a plan, doing all that they could to get Jacko to notice Omer during Jacko’s crucial Tunisian concerts. Then so eagerly allowing their boy to travel with Jacko, and eventually moving into Neverland? Very fishy, especially after Jordie Chandler. Parental pimps, indeed.

As you said, Shawntay, it’s Hollywood — the lures of fame and fortune are greater than most of us regular people can imagine. Why would we think that the “casting couch” only applies when people hit 18? Why do we think it always involves some starlet alone in the big city? If the rumors are true, there are lots of pedophiles in Hollywood (and tons of concomitant former child star drug abusers), so we can’t really exclude that the parents never know. Because I’m sure it was pretty obvious in that Tunisian hotel room where Jacko & Omer played for ‘hours’ that Jacko was a boy lover.

I believe it’s likely “Riz” & “Pia” were cynically playing on Jacko’s attraction to boys and Omer’s fanboy infatuation with Jacko; “naivety” is not a legitimate excuse. This was one of the most f–ked up arrangements in Jacko’s world.

Omer was another victim in MJ’s scheme to have power over boys, not love as he so claimed. MJ, instead of seeking fame, should’ve seek help and steered away from young boys, especially after what happened in 1993-1994, but like a stubborn child, he continued to pursue these inappropriate relationships and determined to fool anyone he came across. Even when I was still a fan, I didn’t buy into that son story. MJ was always fishy with details anyway so he can’t really convince me (even in death) that there wasn’t nothing sinister going on in his relationship with Omer.

Pea

Disregarding the FACT all of this occurred swiftly following the dissolution of his fake marriage to Lisa Marie Presley, the speed with which this whole ‘arrangement’ progressed (within a day or so, he was officially a ‘special friend’); the moving of the whole Bhatti family into Neverland Ranch a year later; and the secret son cover-up (Frank Cascio claimed Jacko told him Omer was his son when they were in Paris during the HIStory tour) is very reasonable suspicion that Jacko’s plans for Omer was that Omer was going to be his ‘bed wench’, so to speak — Jacko’s loved boy he could play with, dress up in Jacko-clothes, and have sex with at the end of the night.

As this article points out, he didn’t need a Norwegian nanny for his babies; he didn’t need a Norwegian to take care of his cars — all suitable prospects could’ve been found in California (not to mention Grace Rwaramba ousted Pia after a year — what does a dental hygienist know about taking care of other people’s newborn babies?). But Jacko went through the hassle of the green cards or hiding them or whatever he did to get his boy firmly planted at Neverland. There’s nothing wholesome about any of it.

Omer Bhatti has zero talent — or it’s marginal at best — so Jacko, one of the biggest stars in history, didn’t need to waste his energy “mentoring” him. And I believe Jacko knew it looked strange — it wasn’t like Omer was a Wade Robson (who was also pimped); no, he was just a cute kid who could maybe dance better than other little kids (not saying much) while wearing a Jacko costume. So Jacko called the boy his “son” so he no one would ask him why his ‘protege’ wasn’t pulling any gigs or doing anything Jacko-orchestrated with his ‘talent’: “Oh, Little Michael is just my son — that’s why he’s always around me, dresses like me, and sleeps with me every night.”

Most disturbing to me is that Jacko had his “bed wench” around his children as if he were their older brother, and those kids had no idea the truth of why Big Brother Omer was there in the first place. (Or if he hadn’t put out he wouldn’t be there at all!) He was more like their very young stepfather, lol.

Jane

Grace didn’t know anything about taking care of newborn babies. She didn’t have any children, she was a secretary. Pia on the other hand had raised two children. Enough said.

Pea

Pia unnecessarily left her job cleaning teeth to become a nanny in a foreign country, only to be ousted by a “secretary” approximately one year later? Sure Pia was a “mother “– but how good was she if, by comparison, Grace raised Prince, Paris, and Blanket to be normal children, and she raised Omer to become some megastar’s lovetoy and future coattails rider.

I do take your point, though I’m skeptical if it actually applies to Pia Bhatti. She should’ve stuck to looking after pearly whites, not children. She’s not very good at the latter apparently.

ShawntayUStay

LOL good point!

Jane

Any thoughts on the rumor that “Blanket” is Omer’s biological brother? Where is Blanket from anyway?

Kat

I doubt that Omer and Blanket are related in any way. Blanket is rumored to have been ‘made’ using an anonymous Latino surrogate mother and the semen of one of MJs bodyguard’s. Not an entirely unbelievable explanation, considering that his two eldest children are biologically the children of his dermatologist and the paid womb that was Debbie Rowe. But ultimately, I don’t know for sure. I don’t think anyone does, not even Blanket. I feel bad for him, because he has to grow up knowing he never had normal parents who conceived him like two regular people, but a freak of a father who only wanted kids who looked nothing like him… On an amusing note, in the Bashir documentary, Jackson says that Blanket is his biological son and that his mother is also black! I bet that even those who soak up everything MJ said as the truth find it hard to believe that Blanket Jackson has two black parents. When Bashir confronts him about Blanket looking white, MJ responds by saying that black people where called colored because they come in all colors… *facepalm*

I really feel sorry for those kids. Maybe Jackson did try to be a good parent, maybe as best as he could, but there is no way to erase the fact that their father paid their mothers to go away and never come back; their own mothers accepted cash to give them up, rejecting them utterly; their father chose drugs over his children (remembering he was zonked out sometimes for days on end rather than spending time with his children) and ultimately did so many drugs he died, leaving them essentially as orphans.

There’s also the legacy he left them – his intense relationships with boys, the molestation allegations, the money problems, his hatred of being black, the plagiarism. As they get older, if they haven’t already, they will remember events from their childhood where they will realize that their father wasn’t innocent at all. That is going to hurt. And they will be asked about it in interviews etc. So sad that Jackson put them in that position.

morginmiyako

Agreed. I think that after leaving Neverland and only having his children’s company he couldn’t escape being a parent and facing the fact that he wouldn’t want his own children hurt. “Remember the Time: Protecting Michael Jackson In His Final Days” leads me to believe this. The one thing he did right was try to protect his own children and their identities. I can’t imagine how they will ever see or accept the truth when the world collectively denies it. MJ himself couldn’t let his fans down. I honestly don’t know how this massive cover-up will ever see the day of light when the tributes and glorification of him as an artist continue. Take away the music and it becomes obvious.

While I agree that it’s a good idea for celebrity parents to protect their children’s identities, Jackson went the entirely wrong way about it.

Press – The traditional symbiosis between the press and established celebrities has been “Lay off my kids and I’ll give you an opportunity to photograph/talk to me informally/interview me at another time”. This works effectively still. Jackson ignored established protocols to preserve his “mystique”, only making the press more and more intrusive.

Kidnappers – Jackson said he forced his children to wear masks to keep them safe from kidnappers. Supposing someone wanted to kidnap those kids, how would they recognize them? Easy. They were the ones wearing masks 🙁

morginmiyako

I agree. But what did MJ know about parenting, a normal life, you get the point. Michael Jackson isn’t a typical celebrity; he’s in a category of his own. While you are 100% right I don’t know how else he could’ve handled it. His thinking wasn’t exactly normal and he was so far gone by that point. Do you think he was capable of making better choices?

WOW. Very Interesting! I’ve always avoided personal videos about him and I now see why. That is indeed “brainwashing” and I’m baffled by the fact that it was intended to show a positive side of him. The comments saying the same are ridiculous! That’s rehearsal. Thank you for sharing it. There is nothing positive to be found yet it should be of no surprise. Everything he did is so blatantly obvious. His own lyrics reflect himself, his love/lust for boys, disregard of morals and acknowledgement of Right Or Wrong (Black or White), and open threats. Is his music of such importance that the world can’t survive without it? Very sad.

ShawntayUStay

It’s a damn lie that MJ was trying to protect his kids from kidnappers…he was trying to disguise the fact that his Black ass had two white kids calling him daddy, LOL. In fact, he was “protecting” himself from the likely inevitable — and righteous — indignation of the public when they realized the ordained birth of 3 nonblack children was the “icing on the cake” of his racial transformation from black kid to Eurasian transvestite, LOL. Nothing MJ did wasn’t without a Lewis Carroll-esque “logical” explanation.

I remember when he was in Japan for a meet and greet tour there in 2007. Celebrities, especially ones traveling with children, do not need to go through the main terminal to check in. They have special private entrances and special private rooms for that. Airports provide these services, otherwise it’s just a security and crowd control nightmare. But Jackson wanted the attention, so he and his kids had to come through the front door of Narita Airport 🙁https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJfLPzEZODg

ShawntayUStay

Funny video (looks like sometime in 1997 or 1998) because you can see MJ trying to pretend that he’s somehow bothered by all the attention that he’s getting. It was all a stunt, and meanwhile Jackson fans think the man had humility. Reminds me of that trip to the Berlin Zoo as seen in the Bashir documentary. He could have easily had his be-masked children go with nannies to see the animals, but instead he just had to be there. The fans, as did Daddy MJ, had zero regard for Paris and Prince’s safety and swarmed him, all the while MJ greedily lapped it up. Those kids could have been crushed. Same goes for him dangling his masked baby out of an 8 story window. Yes, the masks and veils “protected” the children from kidnappers, but they did nothing to protect them from Daddy’s rash, attention-seeking antics. That is what nannies are for.

Did everything have to be a freak show with this guy?

Jane

How sad for Omer, hope he can support himself dancing…

Pea

LOL. How do you know that they never shared the same bed? Jacko only said that about the Arvizo boys, a very inconvenient fact for most of Jacko’s diehards. Yes, I know it’s hard to accept that Jacko continued to sleep in bed with boys following the Jordie Chandler scandal, as it reeks of compulsion. But that was the reality.

Jacko told Martin Bashir that he’s slept in the bed with “many children” and said the same thing to Ed Bradley; years earlier he told Diane Sawyer that he would continue to sleep in bed with children — recall that a little more than a year had passed following that interview that he acquired Omer Bhatti. I doubt he’d had an about-face on bed-sharing.

Omer looks “exactly” like Jacko? I didn’t know he, too, had a detachable nose. Omer called Jacko “Daddy” and Jacko referred to him as his son. He also had Brett Barnes refer to himself as “Brett Jackson” and introduced the boy to the press and others as his “cousin”. What’s the reason for that?

The fact remains that Omer had his own parents and Jacko had his own children. He didn’t need a “son”, and since they didn’t look alike (did Jordie, Brett, and Jimmy look like Jacko, too? They also dressed like mini-Michaels), there needs to be a better explanation as to why a grown ass, just-divorced man needed a small 13YO, non-English speaking boy from a far away land to live with him at Neverland (like that 3rd “wish” Jacko told Jordie about: “Live with me at Neverland forever”).

Omer is not referring to just hanging around boys all day. He’s talking about more than that. Bed-sharing (which you deny he did)? Kissing boys (like he referred to in a poem he wrote)? It’s something that clearly Omer didn’t want to say too much about, so it’s probably something really, really hard to defend.

allysofwaderobson

What I see with Omer especially looking at the professional pictures taken with MJ and his children it seems Michael Jackson wanted a perverse sense of nuclear family. Again MJ is looking at Omer as a significant other. Omer is looking after MJ’S children and there is one picture in which Michael Jackson is with his children and Omer has his hand on MJ’S shoulder looking lovingly down like a doting parent. I believe like James and Jordan he wanted to be married to Omer and by moving him In this bizarre fantasy became reality. Michael Jackson was one of the most dangerous types of pedophiles because he was in my opinion actively trying to mainstream adult/child sexual relationships.

bigakizzle

Thats the same exact thing I thought. Like Mike had his kids and Omer was his girlfriend. Just as I bring my girlfriends around my son. Thats how it struck me.

I don’t think he molested his own sons. There is pedophiles that control themselves and Mj is one of them . He didn’t molest every child he came in contact with. He choses them. After choosing them he groms them and then he wants them out of his life, that’s the most important thing. With all of his special friends he had a relationship only the ages he was interested with them physically. The thew them out when they reached that age. With his ” sons ” he coud have not done this simply because he can’t throw them away whan he wants to. Thaat is completely different from his special friends. So no, it is not because he was a pedophile that he automatically molested his own children. =)

Andreas Moss

Its a difficult question. If they had been his own biologically kids, I’d say definitely no. I think even to a pedophile there’s some difference there when incest is involved. But since they’re most likely not his real kids, and therefore no more related to him than his other victims, it opens the possibility a bit more, I suppose, but I still thinks thats a bit too fucked up, even for him. There’s nothing that indicates it, as far as I know. I really hope not. However, Jerry Sandusky molested his adopted son, so who knows. .

I think Jackson could control himself Pauline. He had a preference for a particular type of boy, and when he found one he zeroed in on them with laser like precision. We can’t be sure about his sons but I don’t believe he would have molested them. He liked to control his special friends and that doesn’t fit comfortably with his parenting techniques that we’ve heard about.

Joni Hector Storhammar

Alright, so I read almost every article on this site. You make a very strong case. I knew he was disturbed individual, but as a fan, I guess I didn’t want to believe the worst of him. But he really was that bad… Being a multi millionaire pop god really does help to get away with anythingh. Only for so long though. I do feel really sorry for his victims, his kids and even himself. Not to mention the fans. He truly was a master manipulator. He manipulated the kids, his family, even the media. His death was the best thing that ever happened to him, regarding the allegations. After his death many people came forward saying he was innocent and I read and wanted to believe many of those things said in his defence. But the truth seems to be much uglier. I must say all the articles here are really well written and in-debth. Will there ever be an article about Michael’s childhood and what kind of abuse he went through? Because isn’t it safe to say Michael most likely was also molested as a child? It wouldn’t make the things he did okay, but at least would make you understand better why he became this manipulative creep. Maybe.

Thank you for your support Joni. Jackson was indeed a master manipulator and he not only groomed boys and their parents, he also groomed his fans and many in the general public. His stories are legion here at MJ Facts for not only their audaciousness but how they are a total contradiction of his true inner self – venal, narcissistic, selfish, cynical and lazy.

To be honest, there has been some discussion about publishing a story on the extent of the abuse Michael Jackson suffered as a boy. Most of the stories about his physical abuse seem to come only from him, and stories about the alleged sexual abuse he suffered aren’t verified. So we are collecting more sources and one day hope to have enough information to make a decision either way.

ShawntayUStay

So are you saying that because he didn’t molest his sons, he couldn’t have been a serial pedophile? LOL, typical fan reasoning. That line of thinking is what propelled the whole argument “MJ must have been the worst pedophile in history because he only had two victims!!!11!!”. Most pedophiles have a well-defined preference, whilst situational molesters (ie, molesters who aren’t pedophiles) are ones that are more likely to molest indiscriminately. Some pedophiles will commit crimes of incest while others don’t, and motivations for why this is true vary.

I don’t think MJ molested his sons but I will say something was definitely up regarding his years-long obsession with having Prince be dyed blond. I chalk it up to either narcissistic idolization of blond children or sexual kink (ie, Jackson is sexually attracted to blond haired boys/what blond represents on a child). And Blanket was pretty emphatic that Prince was MJ’s favorite/got whatever he wanted when they were first interviewed by Oprah.

I agree, the tape could have certainly existed (although without a doubt it has been destroyed now. Victor Guiterrez claimed that it was Jermaine’s son Jeremy who was molested and that Jeremy’s mother Margaret Moldanado had seen it. She wrote in her book “Jackson Family Values: Memories of Madness” flatly denying that she had ever seen such a tape. Interestingly, she told the National Enquirer she would sue them if they ever ran that story yet was silent when Hard Copy did.

Margaret also wrote “Michael never paid me for my silence. He had never molested Jeremy. Period”. As an aside, and without wanting to break any confidences, that is not what another family member, someone who would know, characterized Jeremy and Jackson’s relationship.

However something else that Victor Guiterrez wrote about in his book was the removal of items from Neverland before the 1993 search. Included in his report was professional video equipment and video tapes. Why would Jackson need to get rid of the equipment? It’s totally innocuous, unless it could have incriminated him in some way. So yes, perhaps he did videotape boys.

It’s a stretch though, remember that none of Jackson’s special friends have ever said that they were videotaped in compromising positions by Jackson, and that would be something which would be irrefutable proof of Jackson’s molestations so they wouldn’t hide it.

Perhaps Jackson did videotape them in an erotic (for him) way – just in their underwear, or shorts, or draped in sheets, for his own viewing pleasure (he did have photographs like these).

So no, I don’t think there is strong evidence of Jackson filming molestations. Then again, I’m always ready for surprises when it comes to the weirld world of Michael Jackson!

– Michael Jackson plagiarized the chorus from Manu Dibango’s 1972 hit, Soul Makossa for his song “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’”.

– Veteran singer and songwriter Al Bano claimed Jackson stole part of the musical motif to his song I Cigni Di Balka (The Swans Of Balaka) for Will You Be There.

– You are Not Alone is not permitted to be sold or played in Belgium as it was plagiarized from a Belgian song.

ShawntayUStay

I always thought that the “far worse” comment had to do with him having actual intercourse with young boys, because molestation, the way Pellicano is wording it, seems to refer to fondling or touching. And then Wade Robson comes out and admits that he engaged in a single act of sodomy with MJ when he was 14 and acts of analingus, and both he and James Safechuck alleged multiple violations of California penal code section on sexual penetration (which for males would involve some sort of anal penetration using fingers or objects, etc). So for a heterosexual father of nine, Pellicano probably thought man-boy “butt stuff” was probably worse than just touching a kid. 🙁

Joni Hector Storhammar

So I read the book by his bodyguards, the “Remember the times”. It was insightful and seemed very honest. Apparently Michael had two women he was seeing in a motel rooms, although he dumped the other. So the bodyguards are saying he had a relationship of some sort with this female “friend”. She was also at his funeral. Or so they say. I have also read J. Randy Taraborrelli’s book long time ago, and that said Michael did have sexual relationship with Lisa Marie Presley, as she herself has said so.
So this would indicate he was heterosexual, or at least bi. But at the same time he was with Lisa Marie, he must have juggled with the boys too? It’s all very confusing.
Oh, and by the bodyguards account, Michael seemed to be geniunly this nice and polite person you saw on the documentaries and what not. Like he truly was friendly and warm just for the sake of it. And that there wasn’t that many mean bones in his body. And yet at the same time he was a pedophile. Like he had all this love for everybody and then he would take it over the top with children.

Andreas Moss

“And that there wasn’t that many mean bones in his body. And yet at the same time he was a pedophile.”

This part used to really confuse me too, and reportedly confuses a lot of people still. They just don’t see how MJ could have this “darker side” and how he could harm kids, as he seems so mellow/nice/soft. How could that make sense? Well, MJ is dead, he never admitted his acts, and we’ll never know how he really actually thought about these things, except for what his victims confides us in, but it’s quite enlightening reading how other pedophiles that acts on their urges thinks. Like members of NAMBLA can give you some insight and a-ha moments.

Its evident many pedophiles don’t really think there’s anything wrong about what they do. Its a common human mistake to think it can’t ever be harmful if it feels good. For pedophiles especially this must seem terribly confusing.

I also think part of MJs wrongdoings comes from religious/superstitious ideas, personally. Like when he met Jordy Chandler, it was quite concidental the way they met, as it happened twice and a bit outside the usual odds, and to Jackson mind it supposedly seemed like it was meant to be. They were brought together by mysterious forces, in his mind. He even said something like that the “cosmos brought them together” according to Jordy. If you truly truly truly believe something like that, and that the cosmos itself is actually knighting your obsessive pedophiliac urges, and magically bringing a little boy on a plate, how can there be anything wrong with it? So what if the ‘ignorant’ society tries to say its wrong? You can’t argue with the will of the cosmos.

You can also see the same theme going on in the quote from this article, when he talks about discovering Omer Bhatti.

“And every time I felt like I’m at the end of my rope, some kind of way, a kid would show up somewhere. That’s the truth. Just when I can’t take it anymore. And I really want to die. I really do. When I wanted to die, boom, it hits me. And I get on my knees, and I thank God whenever it happens. I do, Shmuley. And so, I believe in it. I really do.”

It quite disturbingly sounds like MJ is implying God actually sent Omer down to him, and that its not the first time he have granted him ‘young blood’ either. You can also sense that there’s some cashable karma points in there because of his personal sufferings equalled in a brand spanking new ‘special friend’ once again.

Kat

I’m one hundred percent sure that those mysterious ‘secret girlfriends’ that Michael supposedly had never existed in real life. If he would have had a relationship with someone, the public would have known about it. Also, in his last years Jackson was mostly travelling between Bahrain, Ireland, and other places, and increasingly suffering from health issues due to a lengthy habit of drug abuse. I don’t think that dating or hooking up with women was even on his mind.

Whether MJ and Lisa Marie Presley ever had a sexual relationship is debatable. Diane Dimond and Ron Zonen claim they didn’t; Zonen said that Lisa never once spent the night at Neverland and Dimond said that she had sources close to Lisa that say that the marriage was never consummated. But then Lisa Marie herself said that Michael was ‘a freak in bed’… It’s possible that she made such a statement to make people think they actually had a sex life.

MJ did not like women, nor did he respect them. He thought that all women were ‘bitches, wenches, heifers, and hoes’. The exception was his mother, and maybe also older friends and mother figures in his life, like Liz Taylor and Diana Ross. The bodyguards book doesn’t sound at all accurate to me. It’s likely that it’s just another attempt to whitewash his tarnished reputation. I recommend reading the books that ShawntayUstay named in the post of must-read Michael Jackson books. They reveal him as he really was.

ShawntayUStay

Kat, when did Lisa Marie Presley say that MJ was a freak in bed? Did that come from her own lips? Was she serious, or did she mean that MJ was a literal freak laying on a bed? LOL

And I agree with you, if he was with anyone, we not only would’ve known, but he’d have no problem showing her off. It’s just natural to be proud of your lover and want to show him/her off…And he always said that he didn’t want the press in his business, but did he not so obviously flaunt this fake relationships with Brooke Shields, Madonna, and Lisa in front of the paparazzi? He also had no problem — seemed to relish it, actually — flaunting his special friends, holding their hands, nuzzling them, having the sit on his lap. So where’s the girlfriends?

J Randy Taraborelli also claimed that they had a very passionate sex life. I don’t know, I think it’s not true at all! Lisa Marie probably was simply protecting Michael’s and her own reputation by continuing to state that theirs was a real marriage, not a false union orchestrated by a person accused of being a pedophile and in dire need to save his public image.

Jackson sucked at pretending to be hetero, lol. Some closeted gay men and pedophiles do a good job of marrying women and creating an outward appearance of being straight. But nobody bought his supposed romance with Brooke Shields or his fake marriage to Lisa, not even with all the naked frolicking in the You Are Not Alone video. Still, at least you can give him credit for trying. 🙂

I have sympathy for Lisa, to be honest, in relation to their short-lived marriage. I think Jackson used her rather cruelly. Granted, she was probably in on it; I don’t think she deluded herself by believing that he actually loved her or that they were compatible for each other. He used Debbie Rowe too, but at least Debbie was willing to give him white children as ‘gifts’ and was handsomely paid for her services.

ShawntayUStay

I’ve never heard Lisa Marie ever physically say he was a freak in bed, and none of the fans on Yahoo had any proof. All of that jive about sexual chemistry, etc, is from Taraborrelli’s book, and I think it was either made up by him, or maybe MJ paid people to say stuff about him that made him look virile. He’s done it before.

In interviews, Lisa is always very nonchalant about it, saying it was normal, or she doesn’t remember. My opinion is that she is covering up for him. Perhaps they made a deal that whatever happens let’s never tell the world that MJ is impotent with women; let’s never tell the world about that aspect of the relationship, everything else is fair game. She always said she was trying to “save him”, and women are known to do a lot to support a man they love. I think she keeps that secret to this day.

MJ was a cynical bastard and we must remember what James Safechuck alleged in his lawsuit: “Decedent frequently told Plaintiff that he would need to get married to protect his public perception,” the Complaint says. His marriage with Lisa Marie seems to follow this, yes? And according to Lisa, they were dating four months prior to their engagement and marriage, which was in May. Do the math, that says that it started around the time of the settlement with the Chandlers. Coincidence? Love? I think not!

Berta

It’s actually not that confusing at all; research has shown that the majority of pedophiles are heterosexual. Those women could have very well been real (I’ve read this book as well), but who’s to say they weren’t also ‘beards’? But like I’ve said before, his sexuality is irrelevant when it comes to his iniquity.

ShawntayUStay

That’s actually not true, and the idea that pedos are heterosexual probably comes from a political argument and the fact that pedophiles tend to hide their true sexual preference by getting married, having kids, etc.

Most preferential child molesters molest boys, while most situational molesters molest girls. Victims of extrafamilial sexual abuse are usually predated upon by pedophiles, whilst intrafamilial sexual abuse victims tend to be victimized by individuals who do not suffer from pedophilic disorder (ie, they do not have a sexual preference for children). The majority of child pornography, which is usually intended for consumption by pedophiles, features male victims, although girls are victims of child porn as well.

From my research, there is even a difference between the psychiatric scoring and brain scans between different types of pedophiles (homosexual — those attracted to victims of their same sex; heterosexual — those attracted to victims of the opposite sex….bisexual pedophiles tend to be rarer). Even pedophiles who have never molested have different brain responses in the regions which control emotional states and impulses than those pedophiles that have committed child abuse! These offenders cannot be lumped into one category because, like most else in life, there is much individual variation within pedophilia.

But what is abundantly clear is that normal gay and straight people, i.e. individuals attracted to age appropriate partners, DO NOT have the same brain responses as the pedos have, regardless of whether the pedophile has homosexual or heterosexual victim preference. There is no nexus between gays and homosexual pedophiles, because clinically they’re extremely different (this applies to straights and heterosexual pedophiles as well), even though the descriptors/nomenclature is entirely appropriate for both groups, which is usually assigned by the Kinsey scale, 0 being exclusively opposite sex oriented and 6 being exclusively same sex oriented.

Berta

…christ.

Anano Toronjadze

What’s the point of all this? He’s dead for the gods sake get over it god!

No, he is living in Norway and just released a new single. Who told you Omer was dead?

bigakizzle

Didn’t the arvizo’s say on the stand that when Michael was showing him some porn he said, and I’m quoting losely, “prince, come look you are missing some good pussy.” or something along those lines? That is the reason I believe he molested prince. Blanket Im not so sure of because blanket was really young

Pauline brown

Sorry but I don’t believe that Jackson said that to his son. Gavin and his brother were trained liars who were not only found to have lied in the past, but were caught in numerous lies on the witness stand, which is why Jackson was acquitted of all charges. So yeah, I would take anything that they claim with a grain of salt. Before you believe something, you should always look at the SOURCE of the information and not just the information itself.

ShawntayUStay

Seeing that Michael Jackson had numerous special friends, all of whom were boys of a particular age; slept in the bed with young boys for hundreds of nights; been accused of molestation now five separate times, and accused of inappropriate behavior by at least three different men; and paid multimillion dollar settlements to end lawsuits for child molestation; we should take Michael’s declarations of innocence and that he’d “never harm a child” with a grain of salt as well. I suggest you also consider the source of your information, too.

fudhux

Knowing that MJ made several times according to his special friends inapropriate remarks, I find it really believable.

Pauline brown

But Gavin was not a “special friend”. He wasn’t close to MJ like Omer and the others. He said it himself that after he was done with his cancer, MJ wasn’t around all that much and felt that his friend didn’t care about him anymore.

So no, I don’t believe anything that he and his brother claimed.

Andreas Moss

Some of the things Star and Gavin said wasn’t lies. They mixed up some things. According to Jim Clemente, who has studied cases like this all his career, molested children often do that in cases that still shows to be evident they’ve been molested.

Kids just don’t memorize things the same way as adults do. They don’t always think in timelines, by dates and by clock, and when you’re also cross-examined by a quite hostile lawyer like Tom Meserau was, someone who just carefully preying on any mistake you do, its not that difficult to understand how they could mix up a few things.

Berta

That’s what I figured too, that it was some kind of mantra. It was verbatim what he had said before; too rehearsed.

I’m wondering if that’s a good book or not. Perhaps the author wants to send a copy for review.

ShawntayUStay

I’ve never read the bodyguards’ book completely, but the whole girlfriend stuff is completely fabricated. They couldn’t even keep their stories straight about location, who he liked better, etc. First, when they were interviewed in the media, years before the book, they said that the 2 women would visit him in Las Vegas and they’d drive up and down Las Vegas Boulevard — the Strip — with MJ and the woman du jour. Then, in the book, they said the women came out to meet him when they were in Virginia. So which is it? Las Vegas or Virginia? I suspect the locations changed because they realized that there were other people in LV at the time when they worked as bodyguards, and these people could have blew the whole lie apart. Because it is pretty obvious that they were writing that stuff to get people to buy the book, i.e. cha-ching! Fans are very desperate to prove that MJ wasn’t gay or a pedo, so they are gullible. It seems almost obligatory to write that MJ was a good father, wasn’t a pedophile, and liked the ladies.

Mike Garcia very pointedly said that the book was filled with “lies”, but he wasn’t specific on that front. I think he was/is still pissed that he didn’t get a cut of the profits.

Joni Hector Storhammar

Good point! Indeed it does look like the bodyguards still feel the need to protect Michael, or his kids atleast. Since they seemed very fond of them. I could see that as a motive for trying to shine Michael’s shield.

ShawntayUStay

I suspect Bobby Taylor may have molested Michael, or at the very least, been inappropriate with him. He learned the “no boundaries between kids and adults” from somewhere; Bobby Taylor is just a piece of the puzzle though.

Brice Taylor is a pathological liar, LOL. Her book “Thanks For The Memories” about her being a sex slave for powerful, Illuminati men since she was MK-Ultra’d as a kid, is infuriating in its stupidity. she clearly gets off on the idea of ritual child abuse, and according to the introduction, she had little to no relationship with her kids because she was a psychotic attention seeker. She knows zero about MJ and the Jackson 5. She should be in a padded cell.

fudhux

Did anybody read Michael Jackson was my lover ? What is it about ? There is very graphic stuff in it. I heard it was the full story of Jordie and Jackson relationship ? I would love to have it but it is hella pricey on the internet.

ShawntayUStay

No Joni you are not a bigot, I thought the same thing about his nails! When I saw he had long nails, I immediately thought he might be gay because a lot of gay black men grown their nails long, even if they aren’t effeminate. So I was suspicious about his claim he slept with Michael and it being innocent, (not that him being gay means he’d molest, of course). Also, I couldn’t find anything about Bobby Taylor being married or having a girlfriend, so that was also a red flag. You know, Bobby Taylor said that he and MJ would tell each other they lived one another, with Bobby saying “Who loves you?”, little Michael answering “You do.”, and Bobby replying “And don’t you forget it or I’ll kill you. ” That is really creepy and possessive for a grown man to say that to an unrelated boy. But it sounds familiar because MJ also made some of his special friends declare their live for him and vice versa. Bobby Taylor seems so proud of it too, which is also weird IMO.

It’s also curious that Prince also wants to be involved in the movie business. In an interview he said he wanted to be a movie producer or something. Like most of Michael “mentored” kids seemingly wanted to pursue a film career.

Did you notice that too Joni? I wonder if it was some persuasion technique that Jackson found that worked well, so he used it every time? Acquaintance molesters usually have habits and methods they use time and time again, and this looks just like that. We know he definitely used this “movie business” tactic on Jordan, James and Wade, and quite possibly on Jonathan Spence.

ShawntayUStay

Personally, I think the whole film thing was just an extension of Jackson’s ego. He thought everything he did or believed in was absolutely wonderful or the best, so he tried get people, including his special friends, to go along with it. Look how he wanted the public to believe that Tommy Mottola was an evil racist and that he was a victim of police brutality. So I believe MJ wanted his boys to pursue film be HE liked film, and to hell with all these boys’ individual interests and dreams.

ShawntayUStay

Morgin, I see your point, but I still do not think that any celebrity can normalize pedophilia. A geology professor of mine once said that as scientists we need to always be aware of what we say and where we say it because people trust scientists, and will run with whatever information we put out there. My point being, if any one will change the way people view pedophilia, it will be research scientists and academics. And unfortunately, there is a push by some in the psychological/psychiatric community to at least de-stigmatize pedophilia in the minds of therapists. They claim that it is difficult for people suffering from this paraphilia to get legitimate and/or meaningful therapy because of the association with criminals, or something to that effect (?), so their aim is to make the therapeutic and medical community view pedophilia as an “immutable condition”, and only dangerous if they, the pedophiles, act on their feelings, which is why “meaningful therapy” is essential.

It’s a scary thought, not just for the public (parents and children) but also for individuals feeling these things for kids. Pedophilia is a paraphilia, in the same category as frotteurism, voyeurism, exhibitionism, sadism, masochism, etc; i.e. it’s a fetish/fantasy that is intensely arousing and recurring, necessary for sexual performance, and frequently interferes with daily functioning. It is NOT a sexual orientation or inborn (there is no evolutionary advantage to slept with kids, so why would it develop?). Actually, research is ongoing into how it should be more accurately viewed/treated as an obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorder (that goes for all paraphilias.

Michael Jackson does have silly, brainless fans all over the world that do like to act like sleeping in the bed with kids is okay, but I noticed that many of them are quick to emphasize sleeping to really just mean “sleeping”, not sex. They only defend MJ because they believe what he said about it, that it was “sharing a love” and innocent. Pedophiles may hope to use MJ’s boy issues as a cause célèbre to get wider acceptance, but these recalcitrant pedophiles (recalcitrant because they’d rather believe pedophilia is their unalterable “destiny” instead of a potentially treatable mental illness) are a minority, and it is up to normal, rational people — who are the majority, thank God — to accept it. And I don’t think that will happen.

Andreas Moss

Okay, not to act skeptical, Pauline, but you say you believe some accusers, but not Gavin? Who do you believe then?

As for the Arvizos being “trained liars”, it doesn’t make that much sense to me. If they truly were lying, and lets say the brothers and the mother(and he sister) planned this story, and lets even put into an optional third party conspiracy into the mix, wouldn’t their story be MORE airtight? Do you think they’d enter a courtroom not having practices their story to even the smallest detail?

That they were going by fuzzy memory and contradicted eachother, themselves, had forgotten a few things, and so on, to me, just shows that they did NOT practice a trained lie. It was not trained. They were trying to tell it like they remembered it, and it had been a little while.

And none of the mixing ups really was all that important in the bigger picture. Mesereau simply pointed them out like holes and presented it like that. These were kids, and not grown ups, and yes 13 year old boys are still kids.

The ironic thing is that if Wade Robson tells the truth then he actually was trained to lie. MJ called him every day before the trial to train him for potential questions and scenarios, in a role playing scenario. And if Robson was trained, then Brett Barnes and probably Macalauy Culkin was as well.

Are you saying you don’t believe Gavin was molested, that you question it, or are you just saying there’s more reasonable room for doubt than with the others?

There’s also that article from Stacy Brown, that claimed there was 20 victims being paid out over 200 million$, according to DA detectives, lawyers and so on. That seemed like a big thing. I was expecting there to be more information on that following it.

ShawntayUStay

That story about there being 20 victims and $200 million in payoffs is highly unlikely. Could there have been more boys MJ could molested? Absolutely, but to be honest, the Stacy Brown story is tabloid garbage; it’s sounds more like “everything but the kitchen sink” thrown in to make the story seem legit but anyone who has researched MJ extensively knows of its glaring errors and factual inaccuracies. That story was just for clicks, piggy backing off of Wade and James’s lawsuits being in the news.

See, this is why I think Stacy Brown is kind of a lazy journalist. He still pens this article knowing (or maybe not knowing?) that most of it is false.

Pea is right, Gavin is questionable. I do think MJ have them alcohol/allowed them to drink alcohol, and I think he showed them pornography, especially on the first visit to Neverland when Gavin was 11. But nevertheless, the case shouldn’t have been brought because once the prosecution discovered that the kids had been coached to lie under oath before, their credibility was DOA, and no one was going to put Michael Jackson behind bars with those witnesses. Then you have the fact of the timeline — MJ didn’t molest Gavin during the time the world saw them holding hands in the Bashir documentary, but it only started when MJ was using PR strategies to not be labeled a pedophile? Doesn’t make sense.

I think the prosecution, especially Sneddon, and the SBSD knew Jackson was guilty of being a pedophile and getting away with it on 1994 with the Chandler settlement, so they were too eager to believe Gavin, and they shouldn’t have been. That family was messed up!

How ironic is it for a child molester to be (potentially) falsely accused of child molestation.

Andreas Moss

I won’t argue with you Shawntay. You usually seem to know what you are talking about. I don’t know.

Stacy’s article was re-posted on quite a few newsites though. It could be argued it got even more coverage than both Wade and James case. (Although none of them really went superviral for whatever reason!). Brown claimed there was lawyers and DA detectives in Santa Barbara who claimed they have papers that prove this, and that this was quite recent(and not to be confused with the old Pellicano/FBI-story). I suspect there is more to this story, even if its an exaggeration or what have you. I’m not convinced he just made it up from scratch. Well, not yet at least! Laziness and complete fabrication is not the same thing after all.

About Gavin I’m not sure. I personally still thinks its a case where a family not 100% credible actually tells the truth. Its a smaller case than the others though, as Gavin only claimed to have been masturbated two times, as well as being groped.

This type of behavior suits how how most witnesses has explained how MJ approached his victims. He started by touching them all the time, then move to their private places, show them pornography, and then he would masturbate them, talking about how “natural” and “okay” it is. This is what Star and Gavin tesfied, and as Jim Clemente commented, its very similar to like how Jordy described it. To me it sounds a lot like our friend Michael.

Kat

I’m with you, Andreas – I too think that Gavin was a victim. But the case was weak and the family’s troubled background compromised their credibility, and the claim about the conspiracy to kidnap them was rather shaky, especially since they were leaving Neverland while supposedly being held captive in there… But I do believe that the molestation claim was legitimate. And Janet Arvizo said several times that she would never file a civil lawsuit for money. She wanted to put the person that had molested her son in prison. MJ deserved to go to prison – if not for what he did to Gavin, then for what he did to all the previous boys that he had abused.

As for Stacy Brown’s claim – I don’t know what to think about it. I’d like to see a development on the initial story of 20 families and 200 million payoffs to judge its veracity. I also think that it could be an exaggeration rather than a complete fabrication. After all, we already know that he paid people to keep silent. In 1993 La Toya said that a check for one million was written to a garbage collector father. Now we know that it was James Safechuck Sr, the newest accuser’s dad. It would be good to see the details of Stacy Brown’s story; names, dates, amounts of money paid. Then we could adequately judge if it’s true or just media sensationalism.

Andreas Moss

Yes, Kat, and you have a good point about molesters often choosing unstable and poor families because its easier to call them liars and extortionists later on. (Even if Michael was more of a first class molester that could pick boys more freely, even he, at this point, had to be more catious in his selections.)

I think both Star and Gavin seemed like two very restless ADHD-type lads. They probably ran around Neverland, full of sugar, being very boy-ish and weren’t really noting when things happened and when it happened. They didn’t seem like the types to go around writing down dates in filofaxes and so on, so I don’t see why it should be used against them.

And considering Michael Jacksons idea of cosmos bringing him and Jordy together, and God sending Omer down to him when he was in dire need, and as he took credit for magically curing Gavin from cancer, I have no problems imagining that Jackson thought Gavin also was another ‘gift from above’. It seemed like he was thinking that way.

I just wrote basically what you wrote, did Jackson get involved with the Arvizos because they may be easy to discredit later? It’s a common tactic with pedophiles, and it’s one reason some of them get involved in working with troubled kids.

Kat

I think that as a society we tend to imagine that child molesters are these loathsome creeps who have zero good qualities because they engage in such nasty conduct with kids. At the same time, we like to think that their victims are these pure angelic creatures who have their innocence taken away by these horrible people. But often, things aren’t exactly like that. Acquaintance child molesters are often likable, hard-working, married, charitable, with stable lives. And their victims are poor, troubled, with an array of behavioral problems resulting from abuse – aggressiveness, acting out, truancy, propensity toward breaking the law and promiscuous behavior. And I believe that if we learn to have a more realistic understanding of these things about abusers and those abused, then we can fight it better than we do now.

Yes, true – how can anyone blame Gavin and Star for acting like kids when they were kids? Tom Mesereau especially addressed them as ‘young men’ to make them seem older and therefore more responsible for their actions. BTW, Ron Zonen argued that the reason why the Arvizo boys were so unruly while in Neverland was Neverland itself. It was a place where hedonism ruled, and children were allowed to do whatever they wanted – even if it included looking at porn and drinking alcohol. Zonen said that the place spoiled them, and several people attested that they were normal, well-behaved kids when they first visited.

Before your comment gets approved, we wanted to know whether you were going to stick to using this name, or you will use one of the previous aliases you’ve written under, or you will be choosing a new name.

Regards, mjfacts team

Kat

Why do people believe that the Arvizo kids were coached to lie under oath before? I’ve read that many times before, but I don’t know where it comes from. Is it about the JC Penney case? Because I personally think that they were telling the truth. Ron Zonen argued that Janet and her children had been harmed in that altercation. He said that the guards beat them up and consequently Janet had bruises on her body and Gavin’s arm was broken. Black and blue marks don’t show up on the same day when an attack is inflicted, but only after a few days. Zonen said that it was the reason why on the day when the incident happened and the family was taken into police booking the police said that she had no physical signs of an attack on her body. I don’t think that JC Penny would have paid them compensatory money, if it wasn’t true. I think that Tom Mesereau tried to make them look like a family of opportunists, but all celebrities that testified denied that they had tried to get money from them. And Mesereau was horrible to Janet Arvizo. Even now he still continues to insult her, he recently did an interview with King Jordan’s blog radio and he continued to speak about what a disaster Janet was on the stand and that the whole family was a bunch of con artists. He was also slighting to Gavin in the courtroom. He referred to him as ‘young man’ so to minimize the fact that he only twelve or thirteen when the alleged molestation had occurred.

I think it’s important to note that the Arvizos were exactly the kind of family that an acquaintance child molester will go after. Single mother or divorced/arguing parents, disadvantaged and sick children, violence, cheating, substance abuse in the family. Imagine being a child in such a family – you’d be overjoyed if someone would start paying attention to you, taking you places, treating you kindly, fulfilling the role of a father figure in your life. It’s much easier to seduce and groom a kid like that and keep them quiet about molestation. It’s also easy for a child molester to protect himself, if such a family comes out with accusations. I mean – look at the mother, she’s a liar and a welfare fraud! Look at the father – he’s violent and a scammer! And they’re poor too, they’re probably just doing it, because they want my money! It’s what prevented many of Jerry Sandusky’s victims to come forward timely. Almost all of the boys he had victimized came from disadvantaged backgrounds. And they had behavioral problems and probably juvenile delinquency too. That, however, doesn’t mean that the sex abuse hadn’t happened. Experts will say that those are indicators that it had. After all, it was when Larry Feldman discovered that Gavin was acting out in school he suspected that sexual abuse had occurred.

I’m still on the fence as to the Arvizos, and the thing that sticks in my head is this, if they were people that were brilliant at grifting, why did they make the abuse so minimal, why didn’t the mother or sister pretend to witness molestation (they had the opportunity to do so), and why oh why if they were so skilled didn’t they all get their story straight? All those things pop into my brain whenever I read fan comments about the Arvizos.

As for their claim that they went to visit civil lawyers before going to the police about molestation, that is a complete fabrication. The Arvizo’s went to a civil lawyer to facilitate the return of their personal belongings which Jackson had removed from their apartment and put into storage when he invited them to stay at Neverland.

Another thing that sticks out to me – like any other celebrity, Jackson would have anybody he spent any significant amount of time with (certainly people he invited into his home) carefully screened by his security team, so he was satisfied with their character to allow them in after he was presented with their background checks.

Was his security team deficient (really?), or did Jackson invite them in knowing that with their background they would be easy to discredit later?

They are the things I consider.

Andreas Moss

Its an interesting theory that they were actual liars, and I have to admit I’ve never even thought about that being an option.
Their case was always more shaky than the others, but I always saw it like they were probably telling the truth in the light about the other cases.

They seemed a bit shaky, but if you have paid professional lawyers working day and night to find dirt on you, and magnifies that dirt to be everything you are, most people could be made to look bad.

Yes, they had some credibility issues though. Now, I am not an expert on them but it seems to me like Janet Arvizo came out with a story about the guards of JC Penny touching her sexually, twisting her nipples for quite a few seconds, and that was a very late add on to the overall story? It seems a bit strange. Even her own lawyer was supposedly shocked when she added that part to the story so late in the process.

And if she lied about about being sexually molested by the guards in a law suit, then it of course looks suspicious when her son is accusing another person of molesting him in another law suit. I think thats one of the things that seemed more damning about their story.

Still, I think Gavins testimony sounds believable, and it sounds a lot like Michael to me, and thats a big one for me. There’s some nuances there that seems a bit difficult to imagine a little boy would just be able to make up, or even coached.

Like the part about him feeling “a bit weird” and a little ashamed after being masturbated by Jackson, the first time, and how he went very silent for a while, and that Jackson was trying to explain, comfort him and assure how its nothing to ashamed of, and how MJ continuously insisted it was okay and “natural” before and during the act. Little tidbits like that goes deep into the psychology of a child molester, and I wouldn’t expect a restless 13 year old boy like Gavin to have knowledge on that, since not even most grownups seem to understand how child molesters think, let alone ‘nice guy molesters’. Its not intuitive!

To me at least, it sounds unnecessary subtle for a houx. If one is going to accuse someone of molesting then I’d expect something more on a ‘grander’and perhaps shocking scale, at least, not so…. awkward.

He also at one point said that he was so drunk when he thought he was masturbated, and how it seemed so distant that he wasn’t even sure if it actually happened or not. If you are falsely accusing someone, and with so much at risk, who would choose a story like that? He compared it to looking back to “kindergarten”, because it seemed so blurry to him.

He did explain that he rememebered two times quite clearly though. The other times was too blurry, because he was drunk, so he claimed he couldn’t be sure about them, although they MIGHT have happened, according to Gavin.

Neither him or his brother did follow the time at all when they were at Neverland, and that was a problem too, because they probably had to do a forced guess at one point, as the prosecution needed it, which didn’t seem to add up later on, and then they had to change their story, and all that looked bad.

Kat

Yes, the ‘Arvizos went to the same lawyer that Chandlers had to get a million dollar settlement’ is a shameless lie. I know that MJ vindicators love to popularize erroneous information; I think it’s the only way for them to defend their idol. If they would really look at the facts as they are they would see that defending his innocence is sort of a losing battle at this point. The family only went to lawyers to get their furniture and their passports back.

Here’s how I feel about Gavin’s accusations – I don’t think that the boy could be persuaded to say it if it wasn’t true. After all, if you take away the sexual abuse, then Michael only did good things for Gavin. He helped him to rehabilitate after chemo and other cancer-related procedures. He brought him and his family to Neverland and let them use all amenities as much as they wanted. He was like a father to Gavin, while his actual father was violent and abuse. I can’t speak for everyone, but even as a thirteen year old kid I couldn’t be convinced to make up such a malicious lie about someone who had been good to me, knowing that this lie would destroy their reputation and possibly lock them up in a prison for twenty years! If you are kind to other people, they respond back with kindness, not with fake allegations of criminal conduct on your part. I think Gavin was a victim.

People may choose to believe or disbelieve the family, but they were the only ones who didn’t ask for money and tried to put him behind bars, and so they have my respect.

It appears “Pauline” is a morphing troll attempting to merely disrupt the site rather than seek any serious answers to her questions, although she may get back to us on that.

Stacy Brown bases his $200 million claim on the total amounts paid to boys, their families, grooming, lawyers, private detectives, costs related to suppressing information on his boy chasing etc – not just settlements.

I don’t know how accurate that figure is, but it can’t be denied that Jackson spent a lot of money on boys and boy related costs over the years. It would have cost him $10,000 each time he flew Brett Barnes over first class from Australia for their sleepovers.

Strange that Jackson would bring Brett over for sleepovers when his nieces and nephews lived a short car ride away?

Kat

Your victims/non-victims classification seems rather random, Pauline. It looks like you believe that roughly half of the boys that spent time with Michael are victims and the other half isn’t. What do you base your estimations on?…

Pea

I know, right? How did she figure that Mac Culkin & Wade Robson were never molested, even though eyewitnesses have claimed otherwise & one accused Jacko of abuse, and yet Jonathan Spence, one of Jacko’s most mysterious boys, was molested.

She either has a very unique vetting process… Or is trolling.

The Queen Of Swords

But Jordan Chandler named James Safechuck Jr., Wade Robson, Macaulay Culkin, Brett Barnes, and a local neighborhood boy, as all being among Jackson’s “special friends” (read: victims) in his interview with a psychiatrist. I believe Jason Francia (Jackson gave him a $2.4 Million settlement; Wouldn’t he embellish more if he was fabricating) and Wade Robson. Multiple witnesses have allege they saw Jackson abuse Wade Robson, as have multiple witnesses allege they saw Jackson abuse Macaulay Culkin and there was at least one or two witnesses for Jackson’s alleged abuse of Brett Barnes.

Gavin Arvizo may have indeed been a victim afterall (James Safechuck Jr. claimed in his 2014 complaint, and Aaron Carter stated in a 2011 interview, that MJ gave them alchohal; James Safechuck Jr. claimed in his complaint Jackson showed him both Adult-Pornography & Child-Exploitation Films; Wade Robson claimed in his 2013 complaint Jackson showed him Adult-Pornography in the form of magazines, books, and movies; All of these back up Gavin’s 2005 claims), but I understand you not believing the Arvizos’ allegations.

Kat

The idea that a huge celebrity could normalize pedophilia and make it acceptable is something that can be debated, surely, especially if this celebrity has a truly global following, like Michael Jackson did in his prime – 80s and 90s. But I still think it’s highly unlikely, considering the degree of loathing that society has for pedophiles. Besides, the rabid MJ fans still vehemently deny his pedophilia, all while supporting his pedophile-like, highly suspicious behavior. There’s no end to their excuses… I’ve seen them try to minimize his habit of putting children in ambiguous situations many times. For example, when it comes to the whole sleeping in one bed with children, they refuse to acknowledge that he deliberately sought out opportunities to have a specific attractive young boy spend the night with him alone. They’ll say that his bedroom was open to all people, adults and kids, and that sometimes it happened that Michael and a child would fall asleep in the same bed, but that was only because the child was tired and Michael was too polite to tell them to go to another room. But that’s fine anyway, because he had a king-size bed and everybody knows how child-like and asexual MJ was – naughty thoughts wouldn’t even enter his mind… They have all sorts of justifications. Thankfully, their blindness extends only to their idol, if any non-famous man of their acquaintance started acting that way, they would (hopefully) be alarmed.

If these people would accept his pedophilia and child molestation, and still think that there’s nothing wrong with it, then we could be speaking about a celebrity normalizing something that before was taboo. Fortunately, that isn’t happening.

This is such a wrong blog on so many levels. Little to no facts are presented on here. This blog can honestly be described no greater than a make-up things on the spot and paste things here and there to persuade what ever you are trying to get at.

Tai, feel free to refute any facts presented on this site. Your blanket statements just make you look foolish.

Dissect every case.

If you had actually done that you would be alarmed at Michael Jackson’s behavior and activities with boys. It doesn’t disturb you that Michael Jackson called up to have Wade Robson brought to his bed after midnight? That one thing alone is enough to condemn Jackson (and that applies whether yo believe Wade was molested or not. What good man engages in such selfish behavior?)

I’ve slept with my dad’s friend countless of times while he was out on a trip. He was a good friend. Nothing sexual happened.

So your experience is one we should base Jackson’s on? That doesn’t make any sense at all. Oh, and by the way, I don’t believe you.

I am sick and disgusted that you have not moved on, and decide to lead uninformed people astray on Michael’s character.

If Michael Jackson’s character were pure and innocent, he would never had any accusations against him. He would have kept his relationships with children transparent and unambiguous instead of putting children in the compromising positions he did. He was a narcissist who didn’t care about whether people like Brett Barnes and Macauley Culkin were viewed as potential victims because of the situation Jackson put them in because of his selfish needs and desires.

How would they know that Tai? They were with Jackson when he was in terminal decline, not in his heyday when he molested many a young boy. In fact, Jackson’s bodyguards from the past have testified about his molestation of young boys.

Andreas Moss

“I’ve slept with my dad’s friend countless of times while he was out on a trip. He was a good friend. Nothing sexual happened.”

Can you elaborate, Tai? Are you saying you actually slept in the same bed of your fathers friends? How old were you when this happened? How frequent was this? Was these friends of your dad male? And what gender are you? (Not that genders matters immensly, but still..) And what was the explanation for not staying in seperate beds?

It does sound weird, but I’d like to hear more.

Michael wasn’t babysitting these boys though. They were usually invited over. Their families slept in guest houses and the little boy had one-on-one sleepovers with Michael. That was the deal… molestations or not. Once they were over(usually meaning when the mother finally allowed it), they never went back to the guest houses. His immense succession of little boys sleeping over is well documented, and even his defenders seem to acknowledge these sleepovers. I’m all for being open about other motivations, if there was any others that made sense, but you have to admit there’s a lack of options why you have someone over at your bed for days, weeks…

I mean, if I had various little boys not related to me, constantly sleep over in my bed, and it was a frequent thing year after year.. and people started questioning my motivations, why would all these little boys sleep over all the time… and I would explain, oh, oh, oh, nothing sexual, I’m just giving them milk and cookies and we watch Disney movies, and then I sometimes tell them little stories from books, and then I’d tuck them in, I wouldn’t expected people to just be like “Oooh, that makes sense!”.. (and I wouldn’t expect it to make more sense if I was the one that wrote Earthsong.)

Joni Hector Storhammar

That was the way he wanted to be perceived at least, not sure if he truly honestly was like that. His bodyguards can’t know for a fact that he was innocent. They weren’t there when the molestation was allegedly going on. They were with him later, during his final years. And comments here are posted, just not right away. Patience indeed.

BathingApe

I also found another video that has Bobby in it claiming he saw white spots on a younger michael when he would take a shower

Really? So that would mean that Bobby Taylor seen young MJ in a state of undress, either before or after his shower. If this is true (please find the video), this would further seem to support the idea that Bobby molested Jackson, and it was where MJ learned that it was “okay” for boys and men to sleep together. Scary that a mentor would prey on his protege.

Joni Hector Storhammar

I think Bobby Taylor is full of shit with his story there. If you look at these pictures of Michael, there are no blotches:

And the last one has to be already from the Thriller era because his nose is already thinner. And Taylor is talking about the younger Michael in the shower. So I don’t know what the f he is talking about, but hard to believe him. Regarding the blotches at least.

ShawntayUStay

Thanks for those pictures, Joni. With this type of evidence, why do fans and friends of Michael keep saying he’s had vitiligo since he was little? Clearly that is a straight up lie, his skin was smooth and uniform in color. And I don’t see the infamous “hand splotches” that the sequined glove supposedly covered up during the Thriller era…another lie.

I think Bobby Taylor was absolutely full of crap. He was probably just covering up for MJ. I think many of MJ’s friends did that, lie for him…either out of loyalty, for money, or both. His longtime makeup artist, Karen Faye, claims she was covering up his spots since he was brown, and only started to use light makeup when the vitiligo got worse. She’s either lying or that’s what MJ told her and she didn’t know the real truth.

fudhux

LOL his skin is more even than mine. And the third photo is from his thriller era where supposedly the vitiligo started to really be a problem. What a liar !

fudhux

I personnaly saw photos of MJ and no white spots. There is plenty of photos on the internet where he is near the pool as a child and as an adult and his skin was even.

To’Shari

I strongly believe Michael didn’t have vitiligo but his Doctor Arnie Klein DOES have vitiligo. I seen it on his hands/arms when he was on TMZ live being interviewed. Prince Michael has vitiligo under his arm pits in which he inherited from A.K. not Michael. In my theory Michael noticed A.K. skin condition and asked about it and decided to use it for his own skin changing so people won’t accuse him of bleaching. I’ve seen pictures of Michael in swim trunks from a kid to young adult (showing front and back) and I definitely didn’t see any pigmentation loss, nothing but beautiful brown skin that he destroyed with some pigmentation removal treatment (that may caused a vitiligo affect on his skin) that his sister Latoya mentioned; seeing a big box of skin lighting treatment coming to their Havenhurst house. Michael took too many pictures and videos with his shirt off or out swimming, It would have been noticeable and everyone, including the media, would have talked about it back then.

fudhux

I could not have said it better. Or maybe that thing that Prince has on his armpit is not vitiligo who knows ?

ShawntayUStay

People who know Michael personally know what kind of person he was.

Especially his special friends. They knew he was a pedophile. I mean come on, some of his boys have accused him of abuse. How long are you going to deny their perspectives?

Thanks for the link. I don’t know I think Bobby is just lying to protect MJ. Because I don’t think anyone saw any white spots on him when he was a kid, and I’ve seen photos of MJ in the 80s where his body is revealed and it was completely brown.

But I do think Bobby may have seen MJ undressed, though. He seems to have “loose lips” and doesn’t realize the implications of what he says.

Now we know where Michael excessive amount of time with boys alone originated from. 20 hours a day with young mike, just him and not the jackson 5 group? Doing what?? This in it self is beyond creepy. This dude was definitely grooming mike.

fudhux

I don’t think someone’s attractions are learned from somebody else. I think that MJ was born this way. I don’t think that his bed sharing habits were learned from this Bobby dude or because he slept in a bed with a grown man as a child that he thought this was Ok to do so when he becomes an adult. Although I find this very creppy too that this man thought it was normal to see MJ undressed as a child and sleep in the same bed. Like MJ said once about his father beating him : When something happens to you and that it traumatized you you will never do the same thing because you know how bad it feels. And like ShawntayUStay said I doubt this ever happenened, this dude is probably lying to excuse MJ’s actions.

To’Shari

Thanks, I’m not questioning his attraction just the very similar pattern with sleeping arrangements and time Michael spent with his special friends. Bobby put it out there the amount time he was with Michael (I’m wondering if he’s exaggerating with the 20hrs a day), other questionable things he mentioned and sharing a bed with Michael as a child. I know Michael shared beds with his brothers but Bobby is a unrelated stranger and grown man and asking Michael “who loves you, if you don’t say it, i’ll kill you…. ” the way it appears, Michael behavioral pattern may have come from Bobby- don’t know, jmho.

To’Shari

Also, I don’t think Michael was traumatized by Bobby, I think Michael feels he has a special or loving relationship with Bobby than his own father. Michael would look at any adult male as a father figure whose the opposite of Joe. Like he did with his mother with Elizabeth Taylor. Whatever Mike and Bobby had, it seems mike had continued a similar pattern but in his own way.

Pea

I don’t think Bobby Taylor traumatized Jacko either, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t molest Jacko. Michael Jackson clearly had no problem having sex with young boys — why would anyone think that the sex abuse Jacko experienced was “traumatic” in the traditional sense of the word?

Something certainly traumatized MJ. He could never experience a whole, long term relationship with an adult.

Pea

I am interested in Bobby Taylor insofar as what he may have done to Jacko to cause him to, as someone else pointed out, sexualize the mentor/protege relationship. He also sexualized the father/son relationship, which, beyond rumors that he’d been sexually molested by Joe Jackson, indicate to me he was a victim of incest.

As far as “trauma” goes, I was more noting that just because Jacko loved Bobby and Bobby loved him — and for what seemed to be decades until Jacko’s death — doesn’t mean Jacko wasn’t victimized by Bobby Taylor. People seem to think that because a victim still loves their abuser, the abuse could never have happened — countless child molesters have escaped proper censure because of that “love”.

So, in that way, when Jacko repeated the pattern on his ‘special friends’ like Omer Bhatti, his most obvious Mini Me, abusing them and calling it “love”, it shows that his earlier abuse was so confused with affection that he never thought he was “harmed”.

If we think back to Jacko’s life as a child, he was exposed to too much disordered sex. The strip clubs, his brothers having sex with groupies in bed next to him, being locked in a room with a prostitute, his father’s philandering… While this is not politically correct, he seemed more traumatized by all of that than what he may have experienced with his mentor Bobby.

Why do I say that?

Because of what Omer said about some things that Jacko saw as natural and innocent. To Jacko, perhaps sex with boys represented a psychological safe haven from all of the “ugly sex” he saw with women. It was a revisiting of the “love” he felt when he was with Bobby or any other mentor/father-figure who may have sexually abused him without violence. (None of Jacko’s victims accused him of violence.)

Poor Jacko. It’s sad he never got therapy for his confusion. 🙁

Pea

I know some wonder, since Jacko was so open about being physically, verbally, and emotionally abused by his father, why would he not also be open about being sexually abused. I suspect it’s because Jacko didn’t want anyone to look at him strange when he hung around young boys, since it’s known that many abusers have been abused.

It could also be as I’d just described: he didn’t view the sex abuse as abuse but as “love”.

To illustrate that latter point with a real life example, I once read a pretty disturbing narrative by a man who recounted his abuse at the hands of his grandfather (I won’t link the narrative for obvious reasons, among them being that the narrative is written like a Penthouse letter). He was sexually abused for years — from a young boy to an older teenager — by his grandfather whenever he visited his grandfather’s farm during the summer. (This all took place in the 50s and 60s.) The man stated that he enjoyed it, that he loved his grandfather, and that he never did — and still didn’t — see it as abuse, when it clearly was!

Interestingly, the man said that his grandfather was sexually abused in the same way by his own grandfather when he was a boy. The man added that if his daughter had a grandson (his own grandfather actually wanted a grandson to repeat the abuse he experienced; he got that opportunity, apparently), he would do the same thing because it was “loving” and there was nothing wrong with “loving” one’s grandson in that way.

So, maybe Jacko was doing the same thing as that man (and that man’s grandfather). It’s just when you read about things like that, they make you sad. How do you help people who think something bad is good and want to perpetuate the “cycle”, so to speak? I wonder if any of Jacko’s confidantes met a similar resistance. Maybe Bill Bray or Frank Dileo?

m00nwalk

That’s an interesting theory. Were the grandfather and grandson who were abused themselves pedophiles themselves? Or did they just think it was good and want to perpetuate the cycle?

Pea

I’ve had my eye on Bobby Taylor for a while since I learned of him claiming that he and Jacko shared a bed — Bobby Taylor being in his 30s at the time while Jacko was 10 or so. Merely sharing a bed with Bobby Taylor is not going to cause Jacko to start favoring sleeping in bed with young boys. But if Bobby molested him, or did something else inappropriate (such as masturbating in bed next to Jacko) and it excited Jacko, and then that imprinted itself onto his memory as something very titillating, he could absolutely want to repeat that kind of thing with young boys.

No one is “born” a pedophile; that’s absurd. Many people notice their attractions quite early but to even be clinically defined as a pedophile, one would have to be at least 16 attracted to children at least 5 years younger than them. That distinction easily precludes a “born that way” etiology. Pedophilia is not a sexual orientation — it’s a paraphilia, which means it’s compulsive and required for the individual to experience orgasm. No one is any more born being sexually attracted to children than they are to being an exhibitionist or frotteur.

Also, Jacko’s claim that he would never repeat anything that he experienced as a child as an adult may only refer to physical, verbal, and emotional abuse. It’s true he’s never beaten a child, but he has molested them, according to five alleged victims. The simplest explanation for the incongruity between his words and alleged actions is that he doesn’t view sex abuse as abuse.

We may have Bobby Taylor, with whom Jacko apparently shared a mutual love, to blame for his confusion.

ShawntayUStay

I also think Bobby Taylor was possessive of MJ because of his talent. Right now, I think he’s in east Asia recruiting young talent. Perhaps he wanted to plant the seed in Michael’s head that he was the reason for his success? That could partly explain Bobby Taylor’s weird obsessive hoarding of young MJ. Maybe it was “pedo-paternalism”, but many people along the way have tried to claim they were instrumental in discovering the king of pop.

Andreas Moss

Yes, in one of the clips BathingApe posted Bobby says in a praising way that Michael Jackson is “has all of these people in him”, like Sammy Davis Jr, Fred Estaire, etc… and (pause.. drumroll..) Bobby Taylor. I think/hope means he’s talking in term of talent, and not, um, literally, but yes, he seems to believe he was his mentor or something.

In another context he adamantly defends spanking kids, which is kind of curious. I find him a bit creepy.

It seems like they were talking on the telephone well into Michaels later years, so I have no problem believing he was in on MJs secrets.

After having read a bit more about MJ now, it seems like many of the closest people around him probably knew about MJ and a lot of his personal issues, and his tendency to lie to the public about almost everything, including most potentially damaging of course, his compulsive behavior with little boys.

It seems like most of the people working with him on Neverland knew something wasn’t right. But they seemed to like him, as he seemed kind and vulnerable, and wanted to protect him, as they knew everything could and probably would crash down on him like a bomb some day, and they knew he would be too fragile to handle it. Blanca Francia says something like this in her unedited interview on Hard Hopy with Diane Dimond. People working with him thought they were protecting him, but obviously somebody should have pushed him to seek help. Somebody should have confronted him about all the lying.

I don’t know if you can “inherit” pedophilia from your victimizer. But interestingly, depending on how you read Wade Robson’s claims he seems to talks about feeling disturbing pedophilic “urges” when he got his son, and that was part of what got him out of his denial about how fucked up his relation to Michael was, so who knows. I don’t know how that stuff works.

ShawntayUStay

It’s like Bobby Taylor was a proud papa; he feels he was perhaps an integral part of Michael Jackson’s legacy. Whether that is true or not, I don’t know.

You’re right, so many people protected MJ. Do you think it was because they wanted to keep the “gravy train” going, or was it out of genuine love for Jackson? Enabling toxic behavior is common among close friends and relatives, and we already know that MJ’s drug use was enabled by his inner circle and even though they wanted him to stop, they seemed more concerned with maintaining their connection/friendship to/with a celebrity. As Bob Jones and MJ’s sister Janet Jackson both said, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.

But drug addiction, though harmful, still only primarily affects the user. Pedophilia affects other people — the children. So why did no one tell? According to Di Dimond’s book, Michael’s chief of security Bill Bray allegedly told MJ over the phone that he was sick of lying for him, like he did at the grand jury in 93/94, and he knew that MJ was molesting little boys. But those scruples never extended beyond that phone call. Another of Michael’s close aides, Norma Stakos, was called the “madam at Neverland” because she was responsible for bringing families and arranging get togethers with boys MJ took interest in. And in Wade Robson’s most recent legal papers, he quotes a police interview where Norma allegedly told another worker “the kid [MJ] is lucky I understand his ‘problem'”.

These people knew and I also think Michael’s longtime manager Frank Dileo knew as well, because according to JRT’s book, he told MJ that he’d better ice the relationship he had with Jimmy Safechuck because it was starting to look perverted. But we all know James wasn’t MJ’s last boy by a long shot so clearly that exhortation was a feckless one.

Kat

It’s true; a lot of people in Jackson’s inner circle knew about his boy problem and even aided it. His one time executive secretary Orietta Murdoch who worked for MJJ Productions said that it was well-known around the office and she never brought her young son to her work, because Norma Staikos had warned her not to. Victor Gutierrez also said that Miko Brando, Marlon’s son who worked for MJ as a bodyguard, if I’m not mistaken, also knew. I think that Jackson probably knew how to choose people who wouldn’t tell or even help him find new boys… It’s similar to how it was with boys and families. Bob Jones said MJ had a knack for sensing which kids and parents could be easily wooed and then kept cooperating in the abuse due to money and extravagant gifts like jewelry and luxurious cars coming from Jackson. It’s likely Jackson also knew how to hire people who would do what he wanted, no questions asked. And they also wanted to keep their jobs. Bob Jones also said that once he had warned MJ about the impropriety of having his current boy everywhere with him and sleeping in one room with him (I think the boys was James Safechuck). MJs answer was simple: ‘I don’t care what they think!’ He wasn’t going to deviate from his suspicious behavior no matter what anyone told him.

I wonder how vindicators explain the fact that people like Staikos, Bill Bray, and Murdoch knew about boys and cooperated in them being abused? Oh well, they probably say that Diane Dimond and Victor Gutierrez made it all up…

When it comes to Neverland employees who saw MJ molest boys, MJs supporters often say that none of them went to the police and told what they saw, which supposedly means that it never happened. There are several explanations for why they didn’t go to the authorities. People like Ralph Chacon, the Quindoys and the Lemarchans said that they thought no one was going to believe them. Someone said – ‘I would have gone to the police and told them that I saw my boss molest an eleven year old boy, but, if I say that my boss is Michael Jackson and the boy was Macaulay Culkin – two of the biggest stars in the world – nobody’s going to believe me’. MJ also threatened Adrian McManus, his personal made for some time. During the Arvizo trial, when she was on the stand, she said that Michael used to tell her: ‘you know Adrian, if you ever tell anyone [about the boys in my bedroom] then I will tell Norma. She will arrange for something bad to happen to you, and it will happen in a way that no one will know it came from me’. From what I know, she is the only person that MJ had threatened openly like that, so I don’t know how common it was for him to do that. Maybe he made threats to other employees, too. Anyhow, it was chilling to read that when reading the court transcripts. Fans, of course, think that it never happened and label her as yet another disgruntled former employee.

ShawntayUStay

I do think that Michael’s ability to choose “wooable” employees played a big role in most of his inner circle nondisclosures to police, but there had to be something more to it, don’t you think? I mean no one said anything throughout the years, even though Wade Robson mentioned in his legal papers that it was well known MJJ Productions/Neverland gossip that Jackson had a thing for boys. So if the help — people not really close emotionally to MJ — had enough material to work with to continue their behind cupped hands rumor spreading, how much more did his confidantes know?

Sometimes I think that MJ may have kept his proclivities a secret from those he thought highly of our wanted to influence. It’s like why would he care what lowly workers think because he could replace them in two seconds. If Blanca saw him in the shower with a boy, or if Quindoy could record in his diary several instances of seeing young boy underwear on the floor near his bed, it was of no consequence. But since MJ was all about image, as a narcissist, he could have very well have hidden his deviant attractions from people who “mattered”, like Lisa Marie Presley, Brooke Shields, Elizabeth Taylor, some of his family… all the people who’ve said they couldn’t fathom Michael being a child molester. They really could be sincere and never seen MJ act weird around kids. Personally, for example, I truly believe that Janet Jackson does not know or think her brother was a pedophile. He loved Janet the best, according to his own words, so I think he wouldn’t have shown that side.

I also think there is an element of love for Michael that, bad or good depending on one’s perspective, prevented his close aides from telling on him. How much does longtime Secretary

Kat

Hmm, I’m afraid I don’t really have a good answer as to why his close, long-term employees chose not to disclose what they knew or suspected was happening to the authorities. It’s probably a mix of reasons. I think that some employees cared about him and were loyal to him. Even Bob Jones, who send Stacy Brown an email mentioning the head licking incident, but seemed to be overcome by a memory fog when he was testifying at the trial and was asked to speak about it. Then he said that he saw Michael sitting there and felt sympathy toward him. He probably still cared about MJ even with everything that he had witnessed during his employment. People like Norma Staikos and Bill Bray were likely hiding their own involvement in the boy business, after all cooperating and covering up criminal activity counts as a crime, right? Actually, I think that if Wade’s civil case goes to court, then we might hear from Staikos or Orietta Murdoch. He is suing MJJ Productions and other Jackson-related corporations on the grounds that these organisations were supposed to keep him safe. Because instead of that, people working for them contributed to Wade being molested. Murdoch spoke about booking a hotel room for Wade and Joy Robson across his Hideout apartment in Century City, so that Wade would be close to Jackson. She might have to explain her actions…

Oh yes, it’s very probable that Jackson never let Elizabeth Taylor or Brooke Shields see him in an odd situation with a kid. He probably wanted them to only see his good side, so he kept the boy-loving, manipulative, compulsive lying aspects of his personality himself when around them. That’s why they still speak glowingly of him. I don’t know if the Jackson family knows. I suspect they do, but will never tell – they’re protecting his legacy. La Toya was the only one who spoke up and told about the boys who had spent time at Neverland and the checks that were written to their parents. But she was accepted back into the family and told to shut up, and his been on their side every since. I actually suspect that Janet Jackson does know that he abused boys. Not that she has ever seen it with her own eyes, but she’s not stupid and realizes that with this many allegations it is most likely true. Janet has rarely spoken about the matter; I saw one old interview with her where she said that if the Chandler accusations were true the family would have never taken the money, but would have made sure that Michael would land in prison. But apart from that, she hasn’t really spoken about it. Also, none of the Jacksons have made statements about James Safechuck’s allegations. I wonder why? Do they think it’s becoming ridiculous to deny the claims at this point?…

Andreas Moss

That they’re protecting him I partly base on what Blanca Francia said in the interview with Diane Dimond. According to her, everybody close to Michael knew about the boys sleeping over all the time, and staff was whispering about it.

DD: La Toya says she noticed the boys coming and going[while Michael was living at Hayvenhurst, their parents house].
BF: Yes.
DD: Do you believe her?
BF: Yes. Everybody noticed it then. Everybody.

(DD ponders) What exactly did Blanca mean when she said “everybody”, I wondered. She had just described the family as private persons who kept to to their own rooms. Did she mean the cadre of bodyguards, handlers, attorneys, managers, and other servants? If this behavior was occurring on an ongoing basis, why didn’t anyone step forward to tell the authorities? How could that many adults keep such secret? (/DD ponders)

BF: They think they are protecting him, helping him… But they are not really helping him. You see, he needs help.
DD: Psychological help, you mean?
BF: Yeah, and they not helping him by not saying what’s going on.
DD: But do you think they really know what’s going on?
BF: Yes, they do. They know what’s going on.
DD: Why do you think they don’t come forward and say something? Go to the police?
BF: He have the power, I think. He have control over them.
DD: The money?
BF: The money, yes. I feel bad for him because, he will feel that he– you know, the money means everything.
___

BF: I think what is going on now– He really needs help. He really needs help.
DD: Do you think he thinks that? Do you think he thinks he needs help?
BF: He thinks its normal.
DD: But sleeping with young boys and taking baths with young boys is not normal.
BF: Well, not to you and me, but to him.
__

If MJ really thinks this is “normal”, that assumes he might have experienced it himself?

Another quite interesting thing I stumbled upon…

BF: Michaels pajamas were real feminine. It was like with pearls. Pahjmas and stones and silky pajamas with rhinestones.
DD: He wore those every day or was that just for “special friends” nights?
BF: Yeah, special friends nights.. because I noticed he had like the regular ones, but then he had friends over — especially at the hideout, where he had only silky ones..

____

Now, if we look at the Bobby Taylor video again where he talks about “sleeping with Michael”, Taylor also seems to be into silky clothes too. Not sure if its a pajamas he is using there(is it?), but it sure is silky, and there is something arguably “feminine” about it as well.

ShawntayUStay

The pajamas with pearls thing always cracks me up, LOL, because that is really feminine. But MJ always said that he liked sparkles and sequins because they captured the light and that’s where people’s eyes were drawn. He was friends with Liberace, maybe he acquired his love of sparkly things from him?

About MJ thinking sleeping with boys was normal, you’re right, someone had to teach him that because most people find unrelated kids and adults sharing a bed objectionable. Which reminds me, I was thinking about hire Bobby Taylor describes the relationship with young Michael, the 20 hours slept alone with him, sharing his bed, perhaps even seeing MJ undressed before/after a shower. And this is supposed to be a career mentor…But with this level of closeness? But think about MJ’s relationship with his special friends. Many of them were billed as Jackson’s proteges, like Wade, James, Omer, and probably some others as well since he basically foisted a desire to do film on all of them. But as we all know now, he molested these proteges. Could that also demonstrate that he learned this “special” mentor-protege relationship when he was a boy? I mean he had to learn this from somewhere. It reminds me of ancient apprentice relationships between adults and boys, like in Japan with (I think) samurai, and of course in Ancient Greece (pederasty).

I’m thinking he was repeating his own trauma he experienced as a kid.

Andreas Moss

Yes, I was thinking about the thing in Greece as well, and how male mentors and often underage male proteges sometimes had a sexual dimension. Pederastry, I suppose, yes. I think there’s similiar things in certain african tribes, and it is usually something thats ritualistic and tradition. (Even though paradoxically strong homophobia was still prevelant in the same cultures, which I’ve always found strange..)

And you’re right.. Michael did often portray himself as some kind of ‘mentor’ to most of his victims, insisting how he always would look out for them. Even with Jordy, his plan with bringing him along on the tour was for him to see the world and have private tutoring, encouraging him about screenwriting, and so on. Even Evan Chandler thought for a long time that Michael really wanted the best for Jordy, in his own twisted and sick way.

Even though we have to admit we are kind of speculating about all this, its quite plausible Michael had similiar “mentors” when he was young, like Bobby Taylor, and perhaps others. It would make sense at least.

I haven’t been able to dig up too much about Bobby Taylor, but there seem to be talk about Motown Records for some reason not featuring him on historical records and so on, even though he supposedly he should have been big enough, and some people wondering why.

The simple fact about enablers surrounding MJ was this – those that said no to MJ were dismissed, the ones who said yes (and obviously overlooked his selfish behavior) were allowed to stay around.

So MJ surrounded himself with people who gave him an easy route through his perversions and predilections, he was much like Anthony Fremont in that Twilight Zone episode It’s A Good Life. People who took “the path of least resistance” were allowed to stay, the rest got “wished into the corn field”.

ShawntayUStay

Love that episode of TZ, LOL! I think that is true from Jackson’s perspective. But it doesn’t explain the actions of the enablers. Why did they choose to ignore or (maybe even) accept his pedophilia? It had to be a result of a psychological change or something. There’s a famous Stanford University experiment form the 1970s that had ordinary people be assigned to two groups: prisoners or guards. Those that became guards experienced a mental change that made them act cruel to the “prisoners”, so much so they had to stop the study for ethical reasons! And again, all of these participants were normal with no history of violence.

So it makes me think: what about the situation made these normal people turn a blind eye to the abuse of these special friends? What justifications did they employ to protect themselves from feeling enough guilt that could make them speak up? Was it love for MJ? since MJ wasn’t a violent pedophile and groomed these boys into compliant victimization, did the enablers feel no harm was being done to them so why tell? Quindoy said, I think, he didn’t tell because he wasn’t the victim. Maybe they all felt like that…

I’ve thought about this a lot. I think there was a combination of factors.

Some lower order employees were undoubtedly in awe of Jackson.

Some enjoyed the cachet of being able to say they worked for him.

There would have been peer group pressure from other employees, perhaps subtly, not to “make waves” or alternately the knowledge that going to the police would drag all your fellow employees into a mess.

There was that element of not being believed by the police if they did tell.

There was the security of their job (and their prospects of getting another job should they “tell on their boss”).

In later years, after the OSS was formed to protect Jackson, there were threats – for some employees overt, for others covert, and yet others veiled or implied.

And for those closer to Jackson there was his manipulation and his projection of vulnerability that made them feel sorry for him as we saw from Bob Jones on the stand.

I’m sure others can come up with more resons/excuses.

Imagine being placed in that situation. It would be hard to know what to do, even though it’s evident what needed to be done. For some people it would have been too hard to do the right thing.

ShawntayUStay

Good reasons, most of which I have already figured were at play. Imagine being in that situation. That’s like the Kitty Genovese case, where she was being raped and stabbed and screaming for help, with many people looking out their windows, watching the scene unfold, but no one did a thing to help, all because it was not my problem or they believed someone else would step in in the nick of time. A psych professor of mind once said never be those people, always speak up…but it’s easier said than done, especially if the person being victimized isn’t as close to you as the person doing the victimizing.

I’d like to think I would have threw the door opened to the shower room and pummeled MJ to the floor, whisked Brett Barnes to safety and detained MJ until to cops came, if I had been Ralph Chacon that night in spring 1992. But perhaps in Bill Bray’s shoes, I could have acted as (outwardly) nonchalant to the goings on as he did. Michael had bestowed the honor of looking up to Bill as a surrogate father, which probably made Bill feel protective of his “son”. Those feelings are powerful. I’ve seen it so many times, friends and family convinced the obvious isn’t true, and if it is true, it isn’t that bad.

Joni Hector Storhammar

Interesting discussion here! That video BathingApe posted is probably one reason why people don’t come clean and want to protect Michael. That was epic! He sang so well and in the end, to fight the emotions, he does that dance move. That was really great performance!
What I’m saying is Michael made himself this really unique performer, this amazing talent. He is so good! And same time so nice and heartwarming person. How could anyone be mean to that kind of person? It would be hard, because he is an idol. And oh so fragile when threatened. You saw how unwell he seemed to be during the 2005 trial. You can’t hurt a man who seems so hurt. I don’t know how much of it was real, real fear of prison and/or hurt for what was being done to him, and how much pretend to make it seem like he is really hurt by the allegations.

ShawntayUStay

LOL I had the same reaction to the performance; I couldn’t help but smile, all the while telling myself “Stop it!” And I haven’t been a fan in years! 😛

Michael Jackson was a master at appealing to emotion and sympathy. If he could get a well read “Wacko Jacko” cynic like me to soften, I can only imagine how easy it was to con the folks that knew him personally and the gullible masses!

Kat

I was shocked too, when I first read it. I knew that he was a liar and a manipulator, but I didn’t actually think he would threaten someone openly like that. Simultaneously, I wholly believe that Adrian was telling the truth. I’ve read the trial transcripts partially, I still have quite a lot of pages left to read. They are often a tedious read, but also revealing and I’ve learned a lot from them. You should definitely check them out when you get the chance.

Tai, you petulantly demanded that your comments be approved quickly, yet when we did approve your comments, you disappeared. That’s disappointing.

You are what is known as a “hit-and-run” commenter, not particularly interested in discussing ideas or exploring options, but only interested in pushing your point onto other people and not returning to support your argument when challenged.

This almost troll like behavior is only meant to disrupt the site, unless you want to come back and discuss the points you’ve raised? Hope you come back soon.

Pedophelia can’t turn the victims into pedophiles when they grow up. It’s something that just goes wrong with you. Jackson would’ve had lots of porn on his hardrive(why didn’t they check that?). What is weird is the employees who quit in disgust & sold “what they saw” to the tabloids never went tothe police. you’d think they’d care about the child’s saftey a little bit. The tabloids and paper didn’t use much facts but they used a lot to make Micheal look bad.

Another thing is wasn’t Michael sharing his bed with his older brothers at first? The oldest had to be atleast 15-17 at the time. I’m sure Micheal wasn’t molested by them. So it’s slightly possible Micheal’s relationship with the boys was innocent, atleast no seriouls molestation. Michael could’ve been that innocent & naive, he just wanted to have an older sibling relationship with the boys. But he didn’t think how wrong it would look or maybe he did cross some limits. But he wasn’t actually a pedophile.

NilsH

When I see photos of Omer Bhatti, very often he seems to have taped his nose like MJ did. You think he had plastic surgery as a kid, to look more like MJ? That would make him an ‘mini-MJ extreme’.

A while back I would have scoffed at your idea that Omer would have had cosmetic surgery to look like Michael, but nothing much surprises me about Jackson any more.

I wouldn’t put it past Jackson to want Omer to look more like him to strengthen the fiction that Omer was his son, and to organise for one of his compliant doctors to perform a procedure on the poor kid.

I know that sounds somewhat ridiculous but that thought has been playing in my head since I first read your comment Nils.

Melissa

wow it really seems. I doubt it but with MJ, we never know!

Elena

I noticed that too. I think it is not plastic surgery but some
kind of nose prosthesis (just like MJ did have- to hide what had become of his nose- and he probably had one done for Omer so that he would look like him, which would be so twisted… )

Malin Peterson

What is this I just read? I am from Sweden and I can clearly see how you twist things as most fans say you do. Your translation of Omer Bhatti’s interview is so wrong. This is how it is;
“I wish not to say so much about it, but what I want to say is that Michael in many ways was very innocent. I can ofcourse not expect that everyone will see things in the same view as I did (that the sleepovers was innocent) Michael was too naive and took damage of being too kind-hearted (letting kids sleep in his bed and trust the wrong people). For him (sharing a bed with kids) things was natural and completely innocent. But ofcourse not everyone will necessarily see things in the same way I did (that the sleepovers where innocent). Please learn to read behind the lines the right way. You guys are making a victim of someone who abesolutely aren’t a victim that is in everyway disgusting.

Pea

The original article was written in Norwegian, so we’ll defer to the translation suggested by our Norwegian reader Andreas. However, what you’ve “translated” is not that much different from what was provided to us; what’s different are your annotations. You want to direct people to believe that, in spite of the reasonable suspicion that Omer Bhatti was yet another Jordie Chandler, Wade Robson, and James Safechuck (a young boy Jacko “befriended” and slept in bed with alone and on numerous occasions), Omer’s “defense” of Jacko is some kind of trump card against any suggestion that he was molested. Well, it isn’t.

As Omer said (via your translation), “For him things was natural and completely innocent. But ofcourse not everyone will necessarily see things in the same way I did.” We’ll let people interpret those words in light of evidence laid bare in the above article.

You seem to assume he’s talking about sharing bed with kids, but “certain things” could mean anything really, as he’s not being specific here. And there’s never any refering to Jackson sleeping with kids in the article, so you’re obviously just guessing that is what Omer is refering to.

And as people have pointed out earlier, Omer also says “certain things”, as its more than one thing.

The direct question Omer got was never revealed in the article, and while that would be helpful, you can grasp from the context its clearly about the molestation allegations, and that is what Omer is replying to here.

I personally think Omer was being vague on purpose. Its matches how he answers most things about MJ. He just don’t want to go too much into it. Very touchy about his relationship to Jackson.

Pea

On the subject of “phony sons”, Prince Jackson just admitted that Michael Jackson was not his biological father.

I feel Prince’s tweet was a slap in the face to all the fans who whine about what “haters” say and how it will affect Prince, Paris and Blanket.

Prince has accepted that MJ wasn’t his biological father and is cool with it, so any debate on it doesn’t affect him, as it shouldn’t.

It’s just something that “is”. I have to laugh though at some of the fans in that Twitter convo who miss the point completely and continue to insist to Prince that MJ is his real father 🙂

ShawntayUStay

So we finally get the truth that has been obvious to anyone not knee deep in Michael Jackson’s PR spin — albeit in a rather “pseudo-cryptic proverbian” language that most fans will surely miss. The whole “blood is thicker than water” malapropism comes to mind but that has zero to do with what Prince has said. As you’ve already said, Pea, Prince is saying that the covenant between his father Michael, himself, and his two siblings to become one as a family is more important and binding than whatever genetics can say. This is the same idea in the Bible when it speaks of the everlasting covenant made between a believer and God where He becomes their Father; that relationship transcends any earthly bonds a person may have, including the ones with their own flesh-and-blood (and the laws of the land; actually explains the recent spat of some Christians not obeying the US Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage. Some may think it’s stupid but this covenant is very real to a believer).

What is more interesting to me is that I believe these kids are not stupid and have known the truth for a long time — at least since the oldest were teens, but perhaps even before MJ died(!) — but you saw after MJ’s death LaToya Jackson trying to say that Prince had vitiligo, Tito Jackson saying Blanket has MJ’s eyes, etc. The family either didn’t know the truth or they went along with a lie. But that’s typical Jackson family BS…

Also, it begs the question: Why? Why have non-black children, MJ? I suspect that since MJ dealt with feelings of self-hatred, he couldn’t truly love a child that was genetically his, either because of his (obvious) racial self-hatred or his more general self-loathing, as evidenced by his addictions, plastic surgery, BDD, etc. There is also what Dr. Conrad Murray said in a post-incarceration interview with the Daily Mail: he said that MJ didn’t want a genetic link between his children and his family, which let’s us know that there was no love lost when MJ separated himself professionally from his family in the mid 80s.

I watched a program on BET yesterday about OJ Simpson, and OJ and MJ have a lot of similarities — beyond the most glaring, that being two rich, powerful, obviously guilty, celebrities whose guilt was hidden behind the real tangible ineptitude/mistakes of law enforcement, the District Attorney’s Office, and/or witnesses (this, to me, applies to both MJ’s 1993 and 2005 cases). Both are similar in that they both seemed to have had fantasies of leaving humble, more “black” beginnings and part of the fantasies included holding up whiteness as an attainable virtue. Both OJ and MJ pretty much rejected their blackness once they achieved fame, marrying white women and associating with white people to a degree that looks like black abandonment. The only difference between OJ and MJ is that OJ actually liked women so he had no problem having mulatto children; MJ self-hatred was complicated by his fear of vajay-jay of all colors so he naturally would just prefer to use white gametes sans the natural process of conception, LOL.

Oh and all this proves that there is no nexus between Prince’s de-pigmented birthmarks and MJ’s Benoquin-induced “vilitigo”, much to fans’ disappointment. So if MJ lied about his kids’ origins (twice about Blanket to Martin Bashir in the course of a single interview), and this is a HUGE lie, what other stuff did he lie about?

Andreas Moss

I have to admit I’m kind of siding with the MJ fans on this issue. This picture even you can’t explain, Shawntay.

LOL, Andreas. That picture is not a legit comparison of MJ and Prince; the morph works on the power of suggestion because since you are being told to look if these two individuals are “related” or “similar”, you are already priming your brain to see similarities. The fans say “Look at this picture, how can’t you see he’s MJ’s son!” and you will force yourself to see something. It happens quicker than reason/logic can cancel it out. And fans in particular want to see the relatedness; I was the same way and I convinced myself that all those kids were MJ’s.

At any rate, I think it’s important to remember what he said and the context in which he said it: “the blood of covenant is thicker than the water of the womb”. It’s a juxtaposition between his genetically shared relationship with Debbie Rowe and his relationship with MJ. He had zero relationship with his mother because she was just a brood mare, but MJ was the one who was there from day one, so Prince is reiterating the fact that genetic relatedness has no bearing on what, and who, he considers his real family — the “water of the womb” doesn’t make her more of a parent than MJ because he values the mutual and “spiritual” agreement between his siblings and MJ to become one as a family.

Besides the obvious language of the proverb, there is more evidence than Prince’s own words that reasonably show that MJ was never anyone’s bio dad. For one, those children do not look like Jacksons but rather they look white; MJ specifically forbid Debbie Rowe from ever mentioning paternity or she would forfeit her rights to her monetary divorce settlement; in 2005, MJ’s defense team fought hard to keep Debbie Rowe from testifying, with a real fear of her discussing the birth of the children; in the Bashir documentary, MJ lied twice in succession about the nature of his relationship with Blanket’s mother; and of course, he spent lots of time and energy disguising the faces of his children — as the Rabbi Shmuley Boteach said, it’s apparent that he hid the faces of his oldest two because of the paternity issue.

All of these facts begs the question: if they are your own kids, why go through so much trouble trying to obscure their origins? He claimed that he used his own sperm cells for all three of his children, but last time I checked, Benoquin doesn’t bleach your genes! 🙂

Andreas Moss

Oh, haters like you only will see what you want to see, Shawntay! Like MJ said, “They call us colored, because it means we come in all colors!”

Those weren’t his. Period. And no amount of mental gymnastics, standing on my head covering one eye while looking at their pictures, will make me ever think there is a possibility that a black man can have three children in succession that look nothing like him. And MJ wasn’t even multiracial enough to have that happen three times in a row. He was probably at least 75% black on a genetic level, so his kids wouldn’t look like that. Look at the other Jackson grandkids. They’re all mixed and they still look like Jacksons!

Fans need to accept it; MJ lied.

silverspirit

Now the new lie. Jacko was not a drug addict. WTH? That blows my mind even further. The level of denials is just down right delusional. You know you’re a major drug addict when you’re the only person on the planet stupid enough to demand a propofol to “sleep”. He knew it could kill him. He didn’t care. He wanted his “milk”.

NilsH

I always thought that was kind of a weird way to say the children were his. “I used my own sperm cells”. Eh.. yeah.. he was married to Debby Rowe and he claims the kids were conceived in a natural way. Bashir asked him specifically “You had sex with Debby Rowe?” Michael’s reply, very embarrassed: “Yeah yeah yeah..”

I don’t understand how anyone can believe just one second that these 3 children are Michael’s . This is just impossible. Look at them. Prince and Paris are obviously from white parents ( different fathers since they don’t look alike at all) and Blanket has some latino looks; certainly not black. Just look at their hair; they all have straight hair. They don’t look mixed and especially not black. The most obvious one is Paris. She has blue eyes, light hair and skin.

I always see some montages made by fans trying to show a false similarity between Mj and his kids , I personnaly never saw anything similar.

Andreas Moss

Yeah. I think it all boils down to that the fans want to believe what Michael said they were his in those interviews, especially since he was so insisting. If he could lie with such sincerity about that, it kind of opens up the possibilities that other things could have been a lie as well.

There’s this youtuber, Fiona3000, who makes a lot of texty videos about Jackson’s relationship with LMP and Debbie, and about the kids and so on. She claims MJ had a problem with infertility. I think he somehow got a sperm donation from Arnold Klein. At least Paris and Prince. Blanket’s father could be someone else.

fudhux

They are so obssessed with that. They are unbelievebly brainswashed. Everything MJ said is true and if you don’t believe him you are a hater. He is like a god to them, it’s disturbing.

ShawntayUStay

Fiona 3000 should read the autopsy report. The coroner concluded that MJ’s testicles were fully functional and didn’t shoot “blanks”; he wasn’t infertile. So her argument is completely invalidated because she’s starting on a false premise…Not a surprise, LOL.

Kat

The sad thing is that even after Prince Jackson wrote that cryptic or maybe not so cryptic tweet there will still be people who will continue to insist that Michael is the biological father of those kids. They’ve spent so much time and effort making those photo montages, they can’t give up now! Never mind what Prince Jackson says! 😀 Those poor misguided people; I would maybe even have sympathy for them if they weren’t so insufferable, the vast majority of them.

I have a suspicion that Michael’s kids also know that he was a child molester, at least Paris and Prince do, since they are old enough to remember what was going on. They likely remember him inviting boys like Omer Bhatti, Juju Elatab, and Gavin Arvizo to spend a night (or many) in his bedroom.

sbw2015

Not all black people have kinky hair. Some black people have light eyes. Lastly, Hispanic is not a race.

fudhux

Yes, sure, but in this case it’s not believable because MJ is 100 % black and that his kids are 100 % white or hispanic.

ShawntayUStay

The default phenotype for Sub-saharan Africans is dark skin and dark eyes, which is necessary in that climate. Black people in America are descendants of these people. Any deviation from the typical phenotype is a result of random mutation (rare) or admixture from other ethnic groups (much more common). So a black person with light eyes and/or less kinky hair texture is because they are mixed race on a genetic level. Seeing that MJ was a fairly “Black” black man, it’s not likely his biological kids would not demonstrate codominantly expressed black features.

Kim

I’m black and have bright gray eyes with blonde curly hair with tan skin . Genetics can jump you know . I got my eyes and hair from my great great grandmother who was white

fudhux

So ? The point is that these children are not his. It’s impossible since they are 100 % white and MJ is 100 % black. These are not his children. Period.

ShawntayUStay

It’s very rare for a black person to have light hair and light eyes. But you said your hair is curly and your skin is tan — both indicators of black genes in the mix. Paris and Prince and Blanket don’t have any of those traits. Have you seen other Jackson grandkids and great grandkids? They still look like Jacksons, regardless of racial mixture! P, P, & B don’t look like Jacksons. Besides, Prince looks like his (now deceased) father Arnold Klein.

I guess the real question is: why do you need them to be MJ’s kids, genetically?

I guess the real question is: why do you need them to be MJ’s kids, genetically?

As you said a few comments down Shawntay, if this is a huge lie, what else did MJ lie about?

There is a constant fear in many fans that more truths will come out as time progresses, more things they have to address and somehow explain away. It must get tiring for them.

ShawntayUStay

I always repeat the kids question hoping one day I will get an answer…still waiting, LOL. I really want to know what they think. I, myself, can say that when I was a fan, I had to believe they were his because I thought only a crazy person would lie about something this huge (huge to me anyway) but like many things, I’ve seen fans nonchalantly say “of course they’re not his” without thinking of the implications of that being true — namely, he’s a hardcore liar.

To fans I think his lies about plastic surgery and paternity are probably rationalized away as benign if they are found out. They’d be devastated if the ones about vitiligo, his heterosexuality, and of course his “innocent love” for kids were exposed because these are the “holy trinity”of Michael Jackson myths fans spend years researching and defending. The poor dears….

Michał Mańkowski

I certainly don’t agree with opinion that he didn’t have vitiligo. I’m convinced he suffered from this disease.

Michał Mańkowski

I am just wondering. He had obvious problems with his skin color and covered it for much time with a darker cream.

Michał Mańkowski

Just wanted to put here some pictures so you could explain me why he never had vitiligo and bleached his skin. My previous comment was refused I think. I don’t see it anywhere here. I just wanted to know your opinion on that 🙂 Please guys, don’t delete my comment. I’m not any kind os psycho fan or even simple fan. Only wanted to find out what you think. Thanks 🙂

Pea

Michal, please be patient with comment approval. They are all under moderation, and many of us interested in Jacko live in different time zones across the world. 🙂

Pea

Michal, your pictures don’t prove he had vitiligo. Michael Jackson didn’t have vitiligo, according to his autopsy file. It contained a section, starting on page 38, called “Microscopic Report”:

With the help of a doctor at a medical school who specialized in skin pathology, they came to the conclusion that Jacko had “vitiligo” because they found, histologically, that his skin had “no melanocytic pigment”. They noted, however, that he did have melanocytes, the cells that make the skin pigment, although they were “reduced in number”.

That last part is interesting because it confirms that Jacko’s white skin was the result of skin bleaching, not vitiligo. Histologically, vitiligo is characterized by no melanocytes, much like in albinism:

Microscopic examination of involved skin shows a complete absence of melanocytes in association with a total loss of epidermal pigmentation.

It’s important to note, too, that Benoquin — a cream Jacko was allegedly given by the now deceased Dr. Arnold Klein — also presents a histological finding similar to vitiligo, as it can irreversibly destroy melanocytes. But Jacko did have melanocytes — just a reduced number of them. If he had vitiligo, he’d have none. Period. Skin bleaching creams act as transcription factors to induce changes to the DNA “code”, essentially telling melanocytes to stop making black pigment. You may then see a reduction in melanocytes concomitantly because the typical amount seen in black skin is no longer “needed” due to the heavy and repeated doses of bleaching creams.

Additionally, Dr. Klein allegedly gave Jacko Solaquin Forte (a standard hydroquinone), Retin-A (a Retinoid that induces skin peeling), and Benoquin. My theory is that Jacko used Benoquin to whiten his skin completely (as it is the most heavy duty skin bleach), used Retin-A to increase the rate of loss of black skin by literally having it peel off, and maintained his complexion with standard prescription hydroquinone.

After he died, they found several boxes of hydroquinone + kojic acid bleaching cream in his Holmby Hills mansion. There’s no proof — histologically and photographically — that he had vitiligo; his autopsy report proves he lied. He hated his black skin so he bleached it away…

Lucy Johnson

Areas with Vitiligo can have no or fewer melancytes.

Pea

Microscopic examination of involved skin shows a complete absence of melanocytes in association with a total loss of epidermal pigmentation.

Don’t argue with Pea, 002lisamarie; argue with six recognized professionals in the field.

ShawntayUStay

Even if MJ had what could be called vitiligo, was it chemically induced or was it idiopathic, i.e. spontaneous with no discernible cause? Because I can’t get over all the deflection he did when asked about his changing skin tone. When Oprah asked him about it in 1993, after years of the public seeing him get lighter and lighter, he was defensive, saying you can’t bleach your skin, I don’t bleach my skin, and then adding a non sequitur about Michelangelo. Was was he so shocked that we’d want to know what was up with him? And then in his interview with Diane Sawyer, he was still defensive about it again, saying that he was jealous that Lisa Marie could tan but he couldn’t, Lisa also saying — and MJ agreeing — that his changing appearance is because “he’s an artist”. Don’t forget the white children and white wives, and adopting of (mostly) white families like the Cascios.

So my thing is this: what came first — the vitiligo, making him desire to be a weird facsimile of a white(?) man in manner of appearance and action, or the wanting to be a white(?) man made him get “vitiligo” via creams and peels? All of it seems too serendipitous to be a legitimate illness, LOL.

Neely Bullington

The autopsy does state a diagnosis of vitiligo. Where the dark patches of skin are still present, there are melanocytes. In the light parts of the skin, there are no melanocytes. I’m struggling to figure out what you mean by your statement that he didn’t have vitiligo?? The bleach found in his home was reportedly used to lighten the unaffected parts of his skin so he would at least be one solid color. Karen Faye did state he had vitiligo, and the progression was such that he couldn’t cover it with dark makeup anymore due to sweating it off. When there was more white skin than dark, he he reportedly began bleaching away the remaining dark spots. I’m no expert on MJ, but I don’t understand your logic on the subject of vitiligo.

Pea

Neely, yes, the autopsy stated Jacko had vitiligo. However, people who suffer from vitiligo lack melanocytes in the affected skin, meaning the skin that is white. Jacko’s autopsy stated the affected skin lacked pigment but had melanocytes. I am questioning the conclusion there: if vitiligo sufferers lack melanocytes in vitiliginous regions, why did Jacko have melanocytes in his supposedly “vitiliginous” skin?

The alternate explanation would be that Jacko was using skin bleach, which blocks melanin production but does not destroy melanocytes, rather than actually having vitiligo. (Note: monobenzyl ether of hydroquinone, or Benoquin, allegedly makes the skin, upon histological examination, appear similar to vitiligo, i.e. no melanocytes. But Jacko did have melanocytes; again, that’s why I’m questioning the legitimacy of the autopsy report.)

Is it possible that the segment of Jacko’s white skin was from a region that did not have vitiligo but was bleached to match the vitiliginous skin? Certainly it is possible. But Michael’s fans claim his purely white appearance was due to universal vitiligo, which supposedly affects over 80% of the body:

If that is true — if Jacko had been afflicted by “universal vitiligo” — then there would be at least an 80% chance a cutting from his skin would reflect vitiligo (i.e. where no melanocytes are present). Yet the cutting showed melanocytes, a finding more consistent with what Conrad Murray said about Jacko telling him he wanted “flawless porcelain skin”.

I don’t care what Karen Faye said about seeing patches of white skin or trying to “even him out” with makeup. All she would know was what Jacko would’ve told her. To be honest, it is a great shock that people haven’t connected the dots and noted how his changing skin tone coincided with his rapidly “whitening” facial features, which he then followed with white children he claimed were his biologically.

There are many black people with vitiligo. There aren’t many black people who get nose jobs and wear silky wigs to match their “new white skin”.

silverspirit

Obviously, the facts posted go on ignored only to claim again he had it. Oy vey! You can only explain it so many times..LOL Even Murray knew Jacko was bleaching himself beyond recognition so much so he tried to hide those bleaching agents from the authorities. Also, Dr. Klein scolded Jacko for trying to bleach his penis Seems someone is so desperate for him to have this vitiligo they know claim Prince has it. Which is not true. How would he have it when it’s not Jacko’s kid and no one has diagnosed him as having it? That’s the new lie to convince lord knows who that those kids are MJs. That’s what his fans are saying. “Well MJ had vitilgo and Prince does, so that means that his kid”. It’s crazy!

You don’t need a degree to know Jacko had some serious issues with himself & his looks. Who butchers themselves to the point where you have no nose? He should have been committed a long time ago. Up until his death on drugs. He was still getting work done to get drugs.

Neely Bullington

Ummm, no I’m not ‘following’ you, lol. I am intrigued by many discussions here, which I just discovered recently. I actually posted another reply on a different thread, but having to sign up caused the comment to disappear. It was a good one too dang it!!

I am admittedly a confused person with regard to MJ. I have concluded one thing for sure…..no matter how close a person is to MJ, with enough money from either camp, they will say what they’re paid to say.

Thanks for explaining your viewpoint respectfully!

silverspirit

You’re following just fine. So someone paid people to say he had vitiligo? I’m willing to bet he did. He paid a lot of people to silence them, get kids, get drugs..etc. You might be on to something.

Neely

I don’t have any facts to present. Just based on the little research I have done, it seems that cash flow was the big motivator, no matter which camp a person is from, nor how much they claimed to have loved him, protected him, etc. I don’t get it.

May I ask what converted you from fan to contempt?

Neely Bullington

I just realized when you said “following me”, you meant, do I understand, and yes I do. I wonder where you read about bleached skin still containing melanocytes, while vitiliginous skin is absent them.

Along the comment of his white children…..I did notice something disturbing in some clips of Prince when he was a small child. The kid had stark blonde hair and nearly black eyebrows. How disgusting to bleach a toddlers hair so as to have a blonde headed child. In another clip, I actually saw dark roots on the child. I will never understand why someone would do that. To create the image of the child you WISH you had? Disgusting really.

Pea

My sources of information about bleached skin having melanocytes and vitiligo skin lacking them are various medical studies and journal articles over the years. I am a former Michael Jackson fan, and one of the big issues in fandom is trusting his word that he had vitiligo; naturally, a fan would then try to research into vitiligo as much as feasible.

Skin bleach (e.g. hydroquinone) works by blocking melanin production — in other words, the process whereby a functional melanocyte makes skin pigment is interrupted and no pigment is made. People who use skin bleaching products are advised to avoid sunlight because the sun stimulates melanin production and makes moot the work done by the hydroquinone, a phenol compound that’s light sensitive anyway. So basically if a healthy melanocyte is around, it will make melanin unless impeded by something like skin bleach.

Alternately, vitiligo sufferers are told to keep out of the sun because they can’t produce melanin as they have no melanocytes (the absence of which is verified by testing); they burn easily.

Perhaps that answered your question?

It’s a mystery what Jacko’s motive had been when he bleached Prince Jackson’s hair. All I can chalk it up to is self hatred and, frankly, sour grapes that Prince was dark haired and eyed — not a surprise since his real father, Arnold Klein, was Jewish. With Paris, she was born with Debbie’s grey eyes — must’ve been good enough for his high beauty standards.

Neely

Yes, thank you. Did you say it is mentioned in the autopsy somewhere that melanocytes actually still existed in the alleged ‘affected’ areas? I remember Conrad Murray saying he wished to return to Neverland in the midst of the chaos of MJs death, to retrieve the creams that MJ wouldn’t want the public to know about. I regarded it as his attempt to get back there and destroy his own damning evidence.

I am currently reading the court transcripts from the 2005 trial. That’s a lot of reading!!! I am so interested in what you (or anyone else) have to say about his character and why you (if you do) would regard him as a tried and true pedophile. I consider myself a newb since I only started researching a few months back. Never owned his music, never knew about any philanthropic efforts, etc. I only really knew he had been accused of molestation because, well, how could you not? I did grow up with him in his glory days, but was largely unmoved by his spectacle, or his music. I’ve never been a voyeur so to speak, into the lives of celebrities. That world is so far away from me and I wasn’t particularly entertained by it. That said, I have been on a pursuit, like millions of people I would guess, to gather information so as to come to my own conclusions. This pursuit has surprised, more than anyone, myself. I never understood what drove people to chase stories, etc. Now, that has changed. I get it. But, I would like to not be getting it, lol. I wish my interest wasn’t so typical of nearly everyone else on the planet. But, alas, I am so damn curious. 🙂

Pea

In the comment below is where I linked to the autopsy report and provided a photo snippet of the “Microscopic Report” section, detailing the findings of the skin sample they took:

I don’t know if Dr. Conrad Murray wanted to go back to destroy evidence — it’s certainly possible. I didn’t follow the Murray trial because it looked like a dead end. I just disagreed, in principle, with the notion of someone going to jail for giving an addict what they asked for. Propofol is legal to dispense in a non-hospital setting, albeit probably not the smartest decision, and Jacko had done it with other doctors in the past, so Murray going down for doing what Jacko had done before didn’t seem fair. In retrospect, I suppose Conrad deserved what he got. He wasn’t thinking straight… had he been a cartoon he’d have dollar signs in his eyes.

“I’ve never been a voyeur so to speak, into the lives of celebrities…. But, alas, I am so damn curious. :-)”

There’s nothing wrong with being curious! 🙂

Michael Jackson is very interesting (and I’m sure there are a number of other fascinating figures who’d sate our desire to explore the strange and unusual). I have been asked by many of his overly-protective fans, “Why are you interested in someone you hate?” They wrongly assume that believing he’d molested some kids means that you hate him; it doesn’t necessarily mean that. In my view, the most annoying commentators on the subject of Jacko are the ones who hate him — their only contributions are name-calling and trolling fans; they need to find other things to do because they aren’t adding anything (they’re probably miserable folks in real life!). I don’t hate Jacko whatsoever; I don’t like what he did, and I was saddened when I realized the truth and couldn’t listen to his music for a long time. But now, I realize he was an exceedingly sensitive, abused, and broken person, so I am more interested in the question of why he did what he did to the kids for whom he claimed an especial affinity and to his face. I’m also fascinated by the hot mess nature of his family.

As you said, the lives of celebs are so removed from our own, and I, too, wonder what goes on out there in Hollyweird, Ca. We all know it’s gilded — people talk about the irony of the ugly HOLLYWOOD sign that is so impressive from a distance but a let down up close, likely a perfect analogy to the celebrity world. Jacko is a perfect analogy. He is one of the last big great stars, the ones who were very private and whose public persona is all that we know about. Nowadays we have Twitter and Instagram and social media on which celebs have to maintain a presence. Jacko was the last of the great mysterious, smoke-and-mirrors stars, whom I think are the most intriguing.

As for Jacko’s character, he’s hard to figure out, and in spite of having been a fan and having researched him for going on seven years now, I still don’t think I’m as close as I’d like to be to “cracking the puzzle” — highly frustrating for a scientist (which is my background)! I know there’s scores more to learn. But if I were to give an off-the-cuff examination, I’d say I believe he was genuine when he tried to be good — I think he was generous. (Brooke Shields said he seemed to believe he had to give people gifts for people to like him, which is sad.) But he was fiercely competitive, and that drive is what shaped him mostly. It was almost as if he felt he was worthless if he wasn’t on top; I’m assuming that came from the emotional abuse inflicted by Joe Jackson.

I think his racial self-hatred was due to a belief — reasonable, given he was a black person of an older generation — that there was a limit to how big he could become. It’s not dissimilar to the theory about feminists basically being angry they aren’t men who could arguably do more in society. To be honest, from having been a fan, many of his white fans prefer the white version of him…. I suppose Jacko, ever sensitive, was right. 🙁 His racial transformation has always been bothersome to me as a person of color.

At any rate, I, too, am just cracking into the 2005 Arvizo case. I’ve read all the testimonies of people associated with the earlier allegations but, to be honest, I avoided the entire scope of the case because I figured the Not Guilty verdict had some weight. So we’ll see; I’m keeping an open mind because, at this juncture from what I’ve read, the accusers are kind of “suspect”. It’s difficult: I don’t like to imagine someone would lie about being a victim of a sex crime but I also don’t like the idea of jury nullification.

So, welcome. Hope to see you here more often. 🙂

Neely

Thank you for your response. I watched the Conrad trial, and my final conclusion was that he, Dr. Klein, Dr. metzger, should not have been practicing. They’ve all taken an oath to do no harm. Oh, the harm they did. I sympathize with the pressure they were under by no other than MJ himself. I get it. That said, I have LITTLE sympathy or respect for the poor decisions that rested on their own shoulders….no one else’s. I have little sympathy for spinelessness. I don’t condone enabling at the hands of a medical professional. And finally, I do believe that Murray cared about MJ. I believe he was sucked in. I’m sorry for his heartbreak, which I believe he did feel. He had a responsibility to grow a pair, and do the right thing. He was responsible. The only question that ever needed to be asked was, “did you provide the patient with propofol”? Case closed! He would not be dead without it. I’m not naive enough to think some other MD would have been in his place, but, that’s not the point. Speaking only of Dr. Murray, he was solely responsible for providing it. Without it, the day’s events would not have occurred. Another great loss of credibility was that he never mentioned propofol to anyone, until his statement to police, 2 days after MJs death. His feeble response was that he was never asked. Omg…..that blows my mind!! I’m suggesting that when EMTs are called, should it be part of the standard of care to ask every single patient or caregiver, if the patient had been given propofol? That’s absurd.

I viewed the microscopic report. It says that (loosely quoted) SOME melanocytes existed, and it’s vague about what area of skin was sliced for observation. Those things leave questions for me. 😕.

I’m curious about the ’93 case because I know nothing about it or where to search. I only know of the widely broadcast stuff, like, the picture didn’t match, etc. I have read that in a true pedophiles life, it’s a compulsion that is irresistible, and that having a decade pass with no allegations, makes it seem less likely that he was a full on pedophile. And, there was the exoneration. Before I ever did an ounce of research, I would say, I doubt he’s guilty on either count. It’s what I preferred….to think that isn’t in a persons heart. On the flip side, child advocacy is at the core of my thoughts. I feel like a child doesn’t lie about that. Much to my chagrin, it’s not black/white. Kids will lie about that, particularly if they’ve been coached. It happens in custody cases a lot it seems.

Is there any one event that turned from fan to a person who questioned his character?

Pea

I agree that Conrad Murray had affection for Jacko and I believe vice versa. They had a secret going on between them that cost Jacko his life. Still, though, I myself cannot separate Jacko’s desire and history of propofol use with other doctors. Jacko must’ve been intoxicating.

The Microscopic Report indicates that the skin sample contained “no melanocytic pigment”, an indication it was from a white area (without pigment, the skin is white). Therefore, one can deduce that it was from a supposed vitiligo lesion. Since it still had melanocytes, though reduced in number, that suggests the use of skin bleaching creams that only block pigment production while not affecting — or not completely affecting — melanocytes.

“Is there any one event that turned from fan to a person who questioned his character?”

Yes, there was an event. I was doing some online research one day back in 2010 and came across a story about his paying off another family — a mother-son duo named Ruby and David Martinez. This came out in 2006 during a lawsuit filed by Jacko’s former friend F. Marc Schaffel. It essentially stated that Jacko owed Schaffel money lent in a $300,000 loan to pay this family. The payment was verified by Jacko’s accountant Alan Whitman, his business partner Al Malnik, and his then-attorney Mark Geragos. The judge referred to it as a “personal matter” and the jury at the financial trial believed the payment had occurred.

Since it was backed up by so many others, I was forced to regard it as true. It obviously occurred and the mother and son were listed as witnesses on Schaffel’s witness list. I was shocked that he’d paid someone else, and it made me start to question whether he was as innocent as he claimed.

These were the stories, in chronological order (from July 6 to July 15, 2006):

I figured after this that Jacko must have had some kind of compulsion. It immediately cleared the air and everything he did — the ‘special friends’, the sleepovers, the accusations — made more sense.

Neely

I wish I could believe the settlement was for adoption. 🙁

Pea

It’s true that kids can be made to lie. It’s ironic because the man who actually interviewed Jordie Chandler about his allegations, Dr. Richard Gardner, a false child abuse claims expert, was a scientist ahead of his time with regard to a syndrome called Parental Alienation (PAS). He was demonized by feminist sects for suggesting that kids can be coached/conditioned by one parent to despise the other — in his professional experience within the mire of family court, it was usually the mother poisoning the child against the father (naturally, this would anger man-hating feminists).

Jacko fans attack Gardner because they believe Evan Chandler poisoned Jordie against Michael Jackson. Their entire narrative makes little sense, that Jacko got accused of sex abuse by a boy’s father because of a custody dispute and because he was jealous. But if they followed the story, Jacko was working on both parents and only chose June Chandler because she wasn’t as “suspicious”, i.e. she never asked Jacko (like Evan did), “Are you fucking my son up the ass?” (He asked Jacko this on the second day of meeting Jacko, chronologically speaking this would’ve been after the molestations began — sharp eye, that Evan!) and repeatedly wondering if Jacko was a homosexual.

The 1993 case is more subtly complex than the Arvizo one, but Jordie’s story is more credible, in my opinion.

As for kids being coached, one of my reservations about the 2005 trial is how predominant was Janet Arvizo? She was a bit mentally unbalanced, which could give credence to her not coaching her children. Alternately, she was the only stable (using that word loosely) parent the Arvizo kids had, and they could have worshipped her for not being as violent as their father. It would then stand to reason that she could influence her children to go along with her scams and distortions. There’s multiple interpretations (I’m sure others here on MJFacts can give you their completely opposite observations, as well, and hopefully they will).

Neely

Ewwww, I read the interview. Now, I’m just trying to let that all soak in, lol. I also read the link someone posted toward court documents requesting the 14 items be left out of the 2005 trial, at the request of MJ, Yu, and Mesereau. Four DNA specimens from MJs mattress and sheets. One of them belonging to MJ. The others belonging to 3 unknown men. I’m starting to think he ‘loved’ everyone. And, I DO mean in the physical sense. 😬

Michał Mańkowski

Okay. I give up. I’m not insulting anyone in my comments, I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. Why don’t you want to answer me, please? Where are my comments?

Neely

May I ask what brought you to become a non-fan? I know it’s probably a lengthy response, but I would be happy with some bullet points. 🙂

And, may I also ask what led you to believe he’s homosexual?

Thanks!

ShawntayUStay

Hi Neely. Yes, I was a fan of MJ for a little over a year after he died. I didn’t follow him when he was alive although strangely I had a crush on him during his “Dangerous” years (early 90s) when I was a very small child. I watched the Bashir documentary when it aired back in 2003 and thought he was nuts, LOL, but after his death I got swept up in the whole affair and started researching him and declared that he was an innocent misunderstood man; I became a fan and bought MJ stuff and a lot of his music. Ironically, it was interacting with his fans that started to turn me off and I distanced myself from the whole MJ community and started to do more research away from fan sites.

To make a long story short, I realized the fan narrative of MJ being a victim of money-hungry people was not true and that there was actually mountains of evidence that tended to support the idea that he actually was a child molester and that he paid off Jordie Chandler not because he was forced, not because he was innocent and wanted to move on with his life, but because he was afraid of exposure and didn’t want to go to jail. Also, with more research, I could see that MJ spun a very curious web of lies to make himself either look better than he was, or to cover up some pretty unsavory things, for example, bleaching his skin because he didn’t like his own Blackness. The whole PR machine and propaganda is a very interesting aspect of MJ’s story and now I’m just wanting to know what was the reason behind how a guy so talented and on top of the world destroyed himself with boys, drugs, and plastic surgery, among other things. Fascinating.

I will say, however, that one must remember that we are dealing with “Hollyweird” when we look at Michael Jackson and all the players around him. People on the critical side of MJ are sometimes just as suspect as the people who support MJ; no one really has clean hands because money talks! For example, I, of course, believe that Jordie Chandler was molested by MJ, but it would be sweeping things under the rug (IMO) to act as if Jordie’s father, Evan Chandler, didn’t make a complete mess of the situation and perhaps even used his son’s abuse to get a payday — or at least Evan Chandler may have at one time cared but got blinded by the opportunity to “cash in” on the whole debacle. Evan Chandler even told his own lawyer that although he knew that MJ was a “criminal” and that he no longer wanted to protect MJ (he once did as he had like MJ and thought that maybe MJ erred — by molesting his son — out of a “sincere love for Jordie”) and instead wanted to protect any kids in the future, he still insisted that the settlement negotiations continue and only if those broke down, Evan would have his lawyer file a criminal complaint! It’s pretty crazy.

You also have parents that seem to have had suspicions that MJ was “abnormally interested” in their kid but continued to offer them up like a suckling pig on a platter, e.g. Wade Robson’s (who has now admitted MJ molested him) mother, Joy Robson. It’s all so sordid, the motives, the actions, the choices…very interesting! And you gotta always keep an open mind because fact is stranger than fiction, as they say.

I noticed you’ve mentioned you’re reading the Arvizo case. I’m still on the fence about the truthfulness of those allegations because again, it’s Hollyweird and people act strangely when celebrity is involved; there’s a lot of reasonable doubt. I’d be interested in your opinion of it so far.

And, may I also ask what led you to believe he’s homosexual?

Well, this could take a while ;-p but I think he’s a homosexual because based on my research, there has never been any real substantive relationships with any woman. All the alleged “girlfriends” that MJ himself used to name — Brooke Shields, Tatum O’Neal — have confirmed that they were just platonic friends. His marriage to Lisa Marie Presley was suspiciously timed with the settlement in the Jordie Chandler case, with most astute observers noting that it was most likely a ploy to make himself look more “virile” to the masses after being publicly accused of molesting a 13 year old boy. Not to mention the marriage soured quickly and they divorced after 20 months. LMP has since said that she believed she was the “realest” thing MJ had experienced, intimating that MJ didn’t have any real relationships in his 34 years before Lisa Marie.

Also, there is even debate about whether the marriage was “normal”, even though Lisa claims it was. According to one of MJ’s publicists, Stuart Backerman, MJ wasn’t “build that way” for normal romantic relationships, and claimed that his two marriages were not real (which is absolutely true regarding second wife Debbie Rowe; that marriage was for legal purposes so he could have his name on the birth certificates for Paris and Prince Jackson, as per California law). Backerman did say that he didn’t know if MJ was gay or not, but he did ponder whether MJ’s friendship with boys was some form of outlet of expression of his “suppressed” sexuality (not that he believes MJ was a pedo, though).

There is so many fake girlfriend stories and rumors over the years that are always debunked, leaving you with the only possible conclusion that he wasn’t interested. Even in interviews with the Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, MJ disparaged women, saying that they’re greedy and destroy men. According to one of his special friends-cum-accuser, James Safechuck, MJ criticized women’s appearances and thought they were conniving and couldn’t be trusted. http://www.mjfacts.com/mj-facts-exclusive-jimmy-safechuck-story/ The anecdotes go on and on, LOL…too many to list.

Have you heard about the 3 different flavors of semen they found on MJ’s mattress, and in some sheets and underwear that were with his dirty laundry? That evidence was found (and excluded by the judge) in the 2005 case. That’s the biggest indicator of his being with males. Some argue that the semen was from boys with whom he shared a bed and that’s possible, too, given no one has really seen MJ with adults of either sex.

Neely

Wow, thanks for your response. I have trouble knowing what to believe. I have one question. What makes Bob Jones, or Randy Taraborelli, or other ‘truth tellers’ more credible than say, Aphrodite Jones? I just finished her book, and am in the beginning stages of trial transcripts, and so far, her book has been truthful in comparison to the transcripts.

Here is why I ask. I instinctively take these peoples history and character into consideration when I’m trying to determine motive for their accounts. I recently heard, and I’m sorry, I can’t remember where, that Bob Jones was a disgruntled employee, which I’m sure you knew, and was sued by MJ ultimately, and in his testimony, could not remember what the settlement amount was. At 1.5 million, I think you’d remember. I am suspicious of him. That suspicion colors all my thoughts of him consequently. Taraborelli strikes me as someone who can’t decide what to eat for breakfast. I’ve heard his claims which range from one end of the spectrum to the other. His credibility in my eyes, because he can’t pick a struggle, is less than stellar.

No, I have not heard about the semen on the sheets. Is that yet to come in my reading of the transcripts?

I am listening to Jermaines book on audible right now too. Have you read it, and do you care to share your thoughts?

What makes Bob Jones, or Randy Taraborelli, or other ‘truth tellers’
more credible than say, Aphrodite Jones? I just finished her book, and
am in the beginning stages of trial transcripts, and so far, her book
has been truthful in comparison to the transcripts.

You do have a point there! I think many people tend to want to believe the person that says what they want to hear, and both fans and critics of MJ alike often cherry pick information, it’s only natural. But as I’ve researched over the years, I’m more skeptical of people surrounding the MJ case, in general, but I don’t practice throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak.

Here’s my thing: Diane Dimond is vilified by fans as an incredibly unethical, thirsty journalist and TBH, that’s not far from the truth, I’m afraid. She comes off as highly arrogant when people contact her with MJ questions, and laughably, she often gets even basic facts wrong about the case, no doubt because she assumes she is so well-versed in the case that her knowledge is reflexive. That being said, her book “Be Careful Who You Love” is a good book, and pretty fair to MJ even though she thinks he’s a pedo. There’s a lot of good stuff in there, so I would still look to her book for information especially since she has a lot of direct quotes from the infamous Evan Chandler chronology that catalogs the events of the 1993 case through Jordie and Evan’s eyes. So even though Diane Dimond is absurd for the most part, I’d still suggest people read that book.

On the flipside, you have Bob Jones coauthor Stacy Brown, who is a tabloid reporter and is also vilified by fans. He’s stories are to be viewed with high suspicion as he claims an intimate relationship with the Jackson family, especially with Rebbie and Jermaine. He no longer is close to the family and seems to have an axe to grind and puts out a lot of bullshit stories that contradict his previous writings. He also plagiarized a lot in his book with Bob Jones…I could keep going LOL but suffice it to say, unless you can independently verify Stacy’s facts with other sources, his words should be taken with a grain of salt! It’s unfortunate, IMO, because I really liked “Man Behind the Mask”, LOL. About Bob Jones, I don’t think he’s so bad. Have you watched Jaques Peretti’s doc “What Really Happened?” about the 1993 case? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgtNDvXTfsQ He’s in it and he comes off pretty legit in my opinion. He was credible on the stand if we disregard the stuff about head-licking (my opinion is that it was Stacy Brown that added that tidbit in there and Bob Jones approved it, perhaps because he was angry at being cruelly fired…). I think Bob Jones really cared about MJ because he’d been with him since the early 70s, but I also think he wasn’t blind to the boss’s “ways” with young boys. Perhaps loyalty in the end made him keep his mouth closed for so long and then protect MJ in the end.

I agree with you about J. Randy Taraborrelli, LOL. He’s all over the place. I think it’s because he knew MJ personally (but they weren’t BFFs) that he feels so conflicted. Like for instance, when MJ married Lisa Marie, JRT was going around saying the the marriage was fake and it wouldn’t last, etc etc. However, when he wrote the 2003 version of “The Magic and the Madness”, he — almost to the level of performance art — portrayed the relationship as not only legitimate but also steamy and passionate, all the while noting that MJ never had any real relationships prior and using “as strange as it sounds…” kind of wording, like he was trying to convince himself as much as the audience that all the Harlequin-esque romance he was writing was true! He also has been fairly equivocal about the 93 case, suggesting the MJ could have been guilty but then wanting readers to read crap like Mary Fischer’s GQ article “Was Michael Framed?”, as if that is a legit source. I guess it’s good that he’s so all over the place because MJ’s case is all over the place. JRT does NOT believe the Arvizo allegations and he sat for the whole trial. But I suspect that he does have questions about MJ now; he refuses to speak about him.

MJ’s people are just as shifty too, more so because the stakes are higher and they are being paid to maintain the image, although it’s also possible that they just believe because the love and respect MJ. But one can still read their works and find nuggets of gold. Like Frank Cascio’s book “My Friend Michael”; that’s a good book because through Frank’s lies you can see the truth about MJ. I’m convinced that Frank was a “typical” special friend.

I haven’t read Jermaine Jackson’s book yet but I’m skeptical of most Jackson family things. They’re all sleazy IMO and viewed MJ as a cash cow. Jermaine in particular has changed his tune about MJ so many times it’s crazy. In 93 he intimated that there may be some truth in the allegations, but later recanted his statements as he always does. He also wrote a song “Word to the Badd” that slammed MJ. To be fair, MJ never wanted his family to be successful. You should read Margaret Maldonado’s book “Jackson Family Values”. She was Jermaine’s second wife and paints a highy, highly interesting portrait of the Jackson family — a must read! http://www.scribd.com/doc/50562046/Jackson-Family-Values#scribd

Oh and one of the best books about MJ is by a much-maligned Chilean journalist named Victor Gutierrez, called “Michael Jackson Was My Lover”. The fans have vilified him greater than almost anyone else (save Tom Sneddon) because he single-handedly wrote about the 1993 case with exclusive info never before revealed. Because the book is salacious (it portrayed Jordie and MJ’s relationship like it was a consensual affair…but that was just to make headlines; the book mostly contains solid investigative reporting), it’s been vilified by some poorly-informed MJ Haters who’ve never read it. But it sold like hotcakes in West Hollywood gay books stores in the mid 1990s before MJ sued Gutierrez (unrelated to the book) for defamation because he claimed to have seen a tape of MJ performing a sex act on one of his nephews. Even the likes of Diane Dimond and JRT have used its information (without attribution of course because of Victor’s reputation). Also, read Ray Chandler’s book “All That Glitters”, written by Jordie Chandler’s uncle. It’s a good one too, even though, like Gutierrez’s book, it has its own problems.

Neely

Thank you for the links, which I haven’t gotten to yet. I think I’ve actually seen the one with LMP and Priscilla. I remember Priscilla being fairly suspicious, and pissed, haha. I must revisit it however. I can’t recall much about what LMP said. And, many Jackson fans tend to want to vilify her it seems. The one interview I have actually watched more than once was the Oprah one after MJ died. It seems pretty open and honest, and I would like to believe her. I can’t really make that commitment though. She was raised in scandal too I’m sure, and learned about public image from the best, and from birth. She has probably perfected that act by now.

I agree about the Jackson family. Who knows what to believe from them. Jermaines book is entertaining and I have learned a few things. He did say that they never lived with Diana Ross. That was a PR move. I can’t figure out a motive for lying about that now, so I do tend to believe that statement.

I’m going to run off and watch these clips and a few other things, and I will come back to this.

Thank you for your response.

ShawntayUStay

MJ did live with Diana Ross for like a week or two, according to Taraborrelli (I know you don’t like him, LOL), but it wasn’t the whole family and he said that MJ and Diana didn’t really hang out because she was busy all the time. I think it was for him to learn the ropes, so to speak. MJ embellished the relationship since then; according to friends of Diana, MJ wanted to be like her, down to the makeup because he thought she was glamorous. Silly fans on fan boards like Lipstick Alley like to act as if MJ and Diana had a sexual relationship (!)…only fans used to defending MJ’s weird habits with children would think it appropriate for a grown woman to be interested in a young MJ, when she probably saw him as a son.

Neely

In his autobiography, he says she was his mothe, lover, friend…..or something like that. I frankly got stuck on only one word….LOVER. I have no idea what that means, or what MJ wanted people to think. It doesn’t seem like, over the years, it has raised many questions that I can remember. Seems like that statement never drew any attention to itself. I find that odd. And, perhaps I’m simply in the dark. That’s entirely possible, now that I think about it. 🙂

Hi Neely. I don’t think he meant Diana was his “lover” in a physical sense, but rather as two people that loved and cared for each other. In reality he exaggerated their relationship, it was more from his side than hers.

Neely

Oh, one more question….something I’m having a difficult time judging. Lisa Marie Pressley. Anything I have seen about their marriage from her accounts, is that it was real. I don’t know if she’s believable. I’ve never been a fan, and know nothing about her. And, allow me to note that what I have seen is probably what everyone has seen because it was widely broadcast. I haven’t done any digging on her at all.

It was still a little bit more “real” than Debbie Rowe probably, which also was presented as real, but really was nothing, so its not saying too much. If we are to take Lisa Marie literally by her words she did have some kind of affection for him at the time (even if she has admitted she doesn’t understand it in retrospecitve). If you look at it from Michael’s side however the timing at least was highly suspicious. Something Lisa even admitted on when once was on Howard Stern.

At the time Michael just had the allegations from 93 settled, his image was on fire, and desperately he needed something to distract the public from the rumors about him and the little boys.. so, poff, smoke, all of the sudden he was was married to Elvis daughter.

Those days people were often debating who was the greatest pop artist of all time, Elvis or Michael, back and forth, bla bla, and suddenly Michael was there dating Elvis Prestley’s daughter, and they were even already insta-married? Certainly red meat for the tabloids, but real? Well, what do you think? It didn’t last very long, whatever your answer is.

Lisa Marie Prestley infamously was asked who Michael Jackson really was in private, and she answered that she didn’t think even he himself knew who he was in private, and that he only knew(or had an idea of) how to look for the public. Which sounds quite sad, but thats probably an answer why he married Lisa Marie. He thought it would be a good for his public image… and it also took some attention away from the settlements with the Chandlers.

He might have liked Lisa as a person, but its quite unlikely he just suddenly had found the woman of his life, don’t you think? Considering the context of it all? La Toya’s reaction to the LMP weddding at the time is also quite interesting, if you haven’t seen it.

I personally don’t know what to believe about Lisa Marie Presley in terms of actual consummation of the marriage. I think they did “do it” as she said but I doubt it was often, LOL. According to Frank Cascio, a longtime “special friend”, he characterized the marriage as stopping as soon as it started and that she was basically a blip on the radar from his perspective. Apparently MJ loved spending time with the Cascio boys to the annoyance of Lisa Marie, and even in Jermaine’s book, he said that Lisa was mad when MJ spent the day in the studio with young Wade Robson and then decided to sleep over Wade’s house (according to Wade, MJ molested him whenever they shared a bed so it’s likely that could have happened this time, too).

When she filed for divorce, MJ was in Brazil filming his song “They Don’t Care About Us”, and according to director Spike Lee, MJ was completely unaffected, he didn’t even care. Shows how much he cared about the marriage in the first place. It was all a ploy — that’s even what Priscilla Presley thinks! Just like Debbie Rowe, this marriage was fraudulent and I sort of feel sorry that she got caught up in his games.

Neely

I’m just now getting back to this discussion, lol.

Okay, soooooo, the question of homosexuality. According to almost all the adult materials found at Neverland in 2003, the volumes and masses of heterosexual adult material, wouldn’t that suggest he was hetero? Also, I’ve read that at the time of the raid in 2003, MJ was actually overseas, and had been for 3 weeks. His bedroom keypad number was apparently handed out freely. He had nephews that would come and stay, hundreds of people in and out of his house, and no doubt, people who want to go into his bedroom. The semen that was found was ruled out as belonging to Star or Gavin, but rather to 3 adults not including MJs. Any idea who it belonged to? If MJ was out of the country? Has that leaked yet?? 🙂

The two pictures introduced in the trial, have disappeared from speculation as far as I can tell. I’m still only at Janet’s testimony however. And, then there’s the handful of “child erotica”. I can’t understand this part. Isn’t child erotica illegal? There were no charges for possession of child erotica. What’s REALLY going on out there in Los Olivos, jeez! Where are the charges for possession of child erotica?? So confused right now, lol!

I have no idea whose semen was on the bed and the underwear/sheet but if I recall, Jesus Salas said that people were not allowed in his room when MJ wasn’t there. So I don’t think it was a Motel 6 and folks were up in there partying, lol, I think MJ knew exactly whose DNA it was.

I’ve seen his child erotica books because, as creepy and perverted as the subject matter is, there are not illegal to sell or own; in fact, both are in the Library of congress and at various university libraries across the country. MJ would never be charged for it but the materials are known to law enforcement as commonly found in the homes of pedophiles, and anyone looking at those books would immediately be suspicious of a man that owned them, no question!

“Boys Will be Boys” and “The Boy: A Photographic Essay” were created and edited by two NAMBLA pedophiles, and the former contains full frontal boy nudity but no sexually explicit imagery; the latter has less nudity. He also had nudist magazines, which are popular faire for pedos.

Okay, here is where I was disconnected…..child erotica and child pornography are not the same, duh. What MJ had was legal to own. Now I wonder if his “male DNA” was found on those child erotica books. I’ve already forgotten so much of what I read in the trial because I was so interested in getting to Janet, that much of it didn’t stick I think. Ugh! The beauty of aging. 🙁

I agree MJ lied about a lot of things. I’m trying to be objective. I have worked upper management, and PR was a lying machine. PR=LIES. That’s just the way it is. I came to believe it is everywhere, in all business. That said, MJ obviously lied about surgery, he lied about possessing those child erotica books, and frankly, I studied his postures….I could not tell he was lying, if I didn’t in fact know the truth. That is super scary to me. I myself have lied for PR. I am not a criminal though. So, I must say, I’m on the fence about MJ lying about having ever touched a kid inappropriately. And, you’re correct, the Arvizo case does cast a negative light on the formers. It just does. Im not above entertaining the hush money theory of the Chandlers. But, I don’t know if they will be more believable than MJ. again, I haven’t researched them at all. I have heard many objections by MJ from his own mouth though. Unfortunately, I heard the defense in the Chandler case, without hearing the prosecution. That might become a problem because now I’ve also heard this whacky Arvizo lady. It would be helpful if the man hadn’t just up and died one day. :-/

So, here is a thought I’ve had. This research I did about the nature of pedophilia and the compulsion it involves, not unlike that of an addict, and the inability to recover…..if the Arvizos are full of crap, how could it explain the decade that there was nothing? MJ did say that he would never turn a child away who needed love, even after the 1993 allegations. So, he didn’t seem to refrain from his typical behaviors thereafter. Yet, there was nothing. Could a true pedophile go a decade? Is it a spectrum disorder?

Some call the Chandler business hush money. Well, that didn’t work. It was everywhere, and still is. I hope that when I delve into their side, it will become more believable for me. As it stands right now, without much other than very basic knowledge, I can easily say they were SEEKING a payout. I can also easily say it was hush money. I mean, who is more believable? What makes either side more believable than the other? I’m anxious to get this transcript reading complete so I can begin on the Chandler research. It’s true, there doesn’t seem to be a smoking gun. That makes it ridiculously difficult to make up ones own mind. Ugh!

…how could it explain the decade that there was nothing? MJ did say that he would never turn a child away who needed love, even after the 1993 allegations. So, he didn’t seem to refrain from his typical behaviors thereafter. Yet, there was nothing. Could a true pedophile go a decade?

There was no decade long gap. Between 1993 and 2003 Michael Jackson shared his bed with:

Wow, appreciate the links. Yet more reading. I may never see a light at the end of the tunnel! I haven’t read them yet, but a couple of the pics admittedly look pretty suspicious.

When I mentioned “the decade”, I was speaking from a place of unknowing obviously. A decade with no allegations, and a decade with no suspicion, or what I thought was no suspicion. I had no idea all these boys were involved in that decade. I don’t know if you read my earliest comments, but, I was never a fan of MJ. Never owned his music, was never awestruck, etc. I grew up with him, but Prince was more my style, and actually Janet Jackson. I spent money on both their music over the years, but, never MJ. That said, maybe it was out in public eye, but I was not even remotely a follower, so I wouldn’t know. Was it public at the time? This string of boys? I must admit there is a striking resemblance between wade, Brett, and another….whose name I’ve already forgotten. Thank you again for the quick links. I have some reading to do! 🙂

ShawntayUStay

I see what you’re saying, Neely, about whether the Chandlers will be more believable than MJ. After all, he was one of the biggest superstars in pop music history, with a largely “presexual”, wholesome image. And admittedly, the Chandler family is not squeaky clean with regard to how the whole thing was handled, and the father, Evan Chandler, made some poor decisions. You’ll see when you research them. But to be fair, money clouds judgment, and telling the truth and wanting a payday are not mutually exclusive; extortion really only works when the dirt is true or can’t be explained away. However, you have to ask yourself why would anyone accuse this clean cut guy of sexual molestation of young boys all out of the blue if there wasn’t some truth in it? His fans (and MJ himself) say it was always about money, wanting money, so these people just went and lied on Michael Jackson. But would it have stuck if he was an obvious heterosexual like Prince or Bobby Brown?

That is actually the most interesting thing because on the surface one can’t imagine him doing anything like molesting young boys, given his public persona. But as the 1993 investigation ran its course, it was revealed that MJ did sleep repeatedly alone with young boys for at least a decade, and he did have young boy companions year after year. So, it actually wasn’t so off the wall to think this allegedly asexual man without any visible romantic relationships could be a pedo attracted to boys.

Thanks for the insight, and link. I have stopped reading Janet’s testimony for a few days, intrigued by other readings and documentaries, of which the links I found here. This forum is a veritable land mine of information, and much hard work I presume. So, off I go – more digging!

Neely

Thanks for the link to Maureen Orth, which I incidentally haven’t made it to yet. I have looked around this site in lieu of reading Janet’s testimony recently. Jimmy Safechucks story is upsetting. So is the hotel Mirage setting as described by Paul Anka. I can say as a non fan (spanning my life), because I DIDN’T follow in any respect, MJs PR moves were convincing in that he seemed shy, humble, fairly decent in the public persona. I really didn’t even know that persona until I started to research a few months back. I of course knew the biggest things…..criminal suspect, and massive celebrity. That’s it, lol!

I remember seeing the bashir doc the first time. If taken at face value, there is no harm. You must inject yourself much further in order to see the underlying agenda. While I still think the Arvizos are a racket, the other stuff can’t really be dismissed. I thought at the time when MJ said, “why can’t you share your bed? The most loving thing to do is to share your bed”. He followed that up with the Culkin family recall, and giving your bed to company, and if you’re thinking sexual, that’s wrong, etc.

Let me back up a bit, and explain an experience I had. I will try to make it short, although that will be difficult. I was a pediatric home care nurse to an infant whose in home care began at 5 months old. She was tethered to her crib by apnea monitors, feeding tubes, oxygen saturation monitors, and she had a trach which required frequent suction and moisturized 02. Her mother was very young, but lived on her own. She saw the child as a burden. I held her A LOT, because outside of me, she was robbed of human affection. Her mother would often grind on me for doing it. Fast forward to 2 years old. Things were ugly and sometimes violent in her home. She was abused physically. Mother was reported countless times, to no avail. She came and stayed with me a LOT. She spent an entire summer with me, without a single phone call from her mom. I became her God parent on the advice of an investigator who had come to my home to view the child after the mother had once again been reported. At 5 years old, the child revealed molestation to me. I am a mandated reporter and did report it, the perpetrator being one of mother’s boyfriends. I was treated like a I was as suspect as anyone else, by DCFS, as if I would manufacture the story. My eyes were opened that day. I had done nothing but help the child, and even the mother. After a lot of verbal abuse from the mother for turning in her BF/ex husband, I was able to smooth over the situation in order to maintain contact with the child. BUT, in the course of several conversations/apologies and bids to understand what I did it, the mother turned it around, saying she and the BF would drag my husband down a course of legal action that would make my head spin. She knew “on a few occasions the child had been left with my husband”. My husband is a government employee, this was a huge risk.

All this to say, people are dirty. It was easy to believe at first that MJ was genuinely trying to help people in need. I have done it, and it backfired……albeit a much MUCH smaller scale. Things were manufactured about me or my husband in brief conversation, for no other reason than hatred and anger and vengeance. All that I had done for this child and family no longer mattered. There was no conscience. Only disdain for doing what’s right, reporting the abuse. I might also add that the child, when at my house, begged to sleep with me. She is not my child, but, she did need love, like many MANY children do today.

I think this explains why I have felt MJ maybe was innocent. Looking around here has opened my eyes to his behaviors, and even to so many kids I didn’t know about over the years. I can sympathize with these children if they’re telling the truth. It is a tragedy if so. I can also sympathize with MJ, if he was doing things in an honest love for a disadvantaged child, because I have been that person.

God, that’s horrific what happened to you Neely. I hope you, your husband, and more importantly the child are OK.

It’s interesting you note “My husband is a government employee, this was a huge risk”. Imagine the risk for someone like MJ!

That risk must have been communicated by his advisers. He could have put a few simple safeguards in place – always having a responsible chaperone in the room, having surveillance cameras for transparency, or cutting out the sleepovers entirely – to prevent any accusations. That he failed to take any of these simple steps, even after the Chandler accusations, shows that he couldn’t stop what he was doing, and was hiding something.

Neely

Thank you, and yes, we are all doing well. That whole thing started the period in which we would have to withdraw from her. I knew my husband didn’t ask for this. I just dragged the child into our home without even asking if it was okay with him. I couldn’t put him at risk.

I have always felt a love for the mother. She only did what she knew. Poverty, violence, abandonment, alcoholism, etc. The only real peace the child knew was coming to our house. She is soon to be 11 years old, and I am still on speaking terms with her mom. She hasn’t stayed over night with us since that happened, and we have had very limited visits, and those have been over three years ago.

Mother had two other kids. At the worst of the worst, I told her in very tender conversations that if it became too much for her, I would gladly raise the child, no questions asked, and no judgment passed. She refused due to how it would “look”.

So, all that said, part of me wants to believe MJ really did stand for what he portrayed. To seek peace and love children, and heal the world. Doesn’t everyone want to believe there is good in the world? He was in such a unique position to really impact the planet. I wish I could say that was really his heart’s desire. You mentioned him having chaperones, cameras, etc. Yes, that would have been the smart thing to do. He seemed like a smart man….and I remember him saying that after the Chandler case, Frank would always accompany him at “sleepovers”. Was this just another lie? I don’t view Frank as particularly bathed in integrity, so who knows, maybe he was having his way as well.

Pea

I think Michael Jackson was genuine when he tried to be good and do good, but I think because he was a narcissist and never experienced actual compassion from his parents (beaten and verbally abused by Joe Jackson, allowed to be beaten and verbally abused by Katherine’s failings), he could never give anyone actual compassion. It seems to me that he did things based on how it would make him feel, rather than how it made others feel.

That’s not to say that he never made anyone feel good. I remember hearing that the best way to touch someone or something (e.g. a pet) is to touch them as to please yourself, because that kind of touch feels the best to the receiver, too. In the same way, I believe Jacko loved his children and they felt loved by him, but only because it made Jacko feel good to love them, if that makes sense. (And, alternately, Jacko could be very cold-blooded and cut people out on a whim. He’s done that to staff, employees, friends, and family.)

Jacko just did whatever, and if it stopped being what suited him, he’d do something else.

“I remember him saying that after the Chandler case, Frank would always accompany him at “sleepovers”. Was this just another lie?”

Probably. That rule was started by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach. He told Jacko that if he wanted to improve his perception, he could never be alone with any unrelated kid in his bedroom without a chaperone. The Rabbi believes that this was the reason why Jacko and Frank slept on the floor while the Arvizo boys slept on the bed on that first visit back in 2000 (by the way, the Rabbi was at the Ranch when the Arvizo boys visited that time). However, I don’t think that lasted too long. According to Juju Elatab, who was 7 at the time (a year older than Prince Jackson!), he and Jacko slept in the same bed and Jacko was hugging on him in bed. Frank could’ve been there that time but then he was a bad friend for not stopping Jacko.

The Rabbi’s rule was also broken when Jacko was in Vegas with all of those kids in his room. :/

Kat

Child erotica, or materials showing children in the nude isn’t illegal to own. It’s illegal to posses, make, or distribute child pornography – videos, pictures, and et cetera that feature children engaging in sexual acts. I don’t think MJ was interested in child pornography, he must have known it was a serious, federal crime to get involved with that. Besides, he would likely be turned off by that anyway. It seems to me that he would rather have looked at pics of cute boys playing on the beach in the buff than something explicit as child pornography.

fudhux

There is one person that I will never understand : Debbie Rowe. How could this woman sell her children to someone that was accused of child molestation. Even if she did not believe it, how could she sell her flesh and blood, litteraly leaving them with him and not seeing them for years.She calls Wade Robson an opportunist but she is the biggest opportunist on the planet. She sold her own kids. Then she reconnected with Paris ( poor girl I fell like it affected her ) after she said that she never wanted to see them again. Disgusting human being ! She does not deserve to be called a ” mother “.

Pea

Dr Arnold Klein on “Larry King Live” in July 2009. He makes equivocal statements about paternity that we know now, since Prince Jackson is older and we can see his similarities to Klein with our own eyes, are false.

KLEIN: I don’t know that answer, because I would that that it’s possible that he did. You can’t guarantee that. You can only guarantee things you see. I don’t want to make any suppositions about anything in this interview, because I want this to be as truthful as possible.

KING: Now, what about all the rumors about you and the fathering of those children?

KLEIN: Here’s the most important thing. Michael loved those children as a father. Those children loved him as a father. As far as I am concerned, that’s the most important grouping that is.

KING: That’s not answering the question.

KLEIN: No, because I’m not going to answer it the way you want me to answer it, because…

KING: Well, you can say no.

KLEIN: I can say no, then. I will say no if that’s what you want to hear.

KING: No, I want to hear what you know.

KLEIN: What I will tell you is I think what’s most important thing about this whole thing, to end this thing, is that the most important thing in who the father is who the father is — who the children want their father to be.

And I will tell you this, I will say no, because the most important person to these children is how Michael loved them and how he loved his children and how they loved him. Because they would never pass him without saying, I love you, daddy. He would say I love you. I’ve never seen such emotional care…

(CROSSTALK)

KING: Earlier today, you said you couldn’t answer that one way or the other.

KLEIN: I still can’t answer it absolutely one way or another.

KING: So that means you donated sperm?

KLEIN: I once donated sperm. I don’t know that you have to know…

KING: You donated to him.

KLEIN: No, absolutely not.

KING: Oh, you donated sperm to a sperm bank.

KLEIN: Once, to a sperm bank. But I don’t think I should go over my legal affairs, because I think to the best of my knowledge, I’m not the father. I want to tell you that this discussion, however, is between Michael, his children and this person. It’s not to be discussed who the father is over national television.

KING: Or, it’s nobody’s business.

KLEIN: It’s no one’s business.

florence

Pea, you are ignorant. People like you will always surprise me. Your life must be pretty sad if you have to make a lot of research about someone you hate, no? This website is full of lies. They are using the ‘bad’ things and cover the good ones. And then they say they are ‘objective’. That’s the reason why they’re a few articles. Michael definitely had vitiligo. I saw some of your sources were CNN so here: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/07/showbiz/jackson-death-trial/ His autopsy also showed a skin depigmentation and revealed lupus. He bleached his skin, it’s not a secret. If he wanted to be white, he would had bleached his skin way before the bad-era. The vitiligo started a little after Thriller, but e kept being black, why? Because it appeared at places you could easily hide. Do you know Chantelle Brown Young? She also has vitiligo. She’s a beautiful woman but how much people would be strong enough to live with this disease? People called her ‘cow’ when she was a kid. MJ wanted to look normal. I’m sure that if he didn’t bleach his skin, people would call him ‘weird’ and ‘bizarre’.

About his paternity: I don’t believe he is the biologic father of Prince. I’m not sure for Paris and Blanket. If I good remember, a lot of persons in the Jackson’s family has/had blue eyes (Joe Jackson describes it in his book). Blanket has vitiligo, what’s for me enough. The global incidence of vitiligo is less than 1%. Michael knew nobody else with vitiligo, or with family with vitiligo. Is it important if he was his ”true” father? A true father is the one who cares for his children. And he did.

What are you calling objectivity? Your full website is subjective and what you call proof is BS. I saw a few times under a picture of Michael with a kid ‘poor kid’. In your article about Arvizo you didn’t talk about the past of Gavin’s mother, why? Did you talk about the medicine Jordan’s father administrate him to let him ‘speak’? Did you talk about the Peter Pan’s syndrome? Did you talk about Take Two: The footage? Objective, my ass. You talked about pornographic magazines and videos found and said MJ was homosexual. Do you know what homosexuality is? Homosexuals don’t feel attracted to womans. In no way. They can get excited by porno’s but will never command themself Playboy’s and stuff. I’m studying psychology so I know what I’m saying. Pedophiles, can get attracted by older people but they prefer kids. It’s not because a old (wo)man like playing with kids that he is a pedophile. Some pedophiles only use children for sex, they don’t like to interact with them. It was proven that most pedophiles commit 100+ crimes in their lives, Michael was accused 2 times before his dead (before people knew he was 500 millions rich). The psy of the Arvizo’s said herself that he didn’t have the profile of a pedophile but of a 10y old. People with no childhood can grow in two way: try to give what they didn’t have, or otherwise: do the same to other kids. Michael was the first one. It’s not because you play with your little cousin that you’re a pedophile, right? Not because he say that you beat him that’s true, right? You have a really closed mind. Open your eyes and search TRUE proof. I’m a MJ fan and I’m not scared to see the truth.

That doesn’t look like discoloration typical of vitiligo…it looks like the shine from light hitting his skin. Actually, many of the photos you’ve attached don’t look like anything other than either manipulated photos (eg saturation, exposure, etc) or just light play off his skin. They don’t prove vitiligo, contrary to fan belief.

At best, MJ gave himself vitiligo in his quest to be white, damaging his skin; at worst, he was just a liar using that as an excuse to whiten his skin. Either way, it wasn’t “organic”. Why not just get over it?

Photography has an “inherited bias” against dark skin. [Photographer Syreeta] McFadden explains that when it came to the invention of color film — developed to be used by the public and taken to a lab — “the technician worked off a reference card with a perfectly balanced portrait of a pale-skinned woman.”

They’re called Shirley cards, named after the first woman to pose for them. She is wearing a white dress with long black gloves. A pearl bracelet adorns one of her wrists. She has auburn hair that drapes her exposed shoulders. Her eyes are blue. The background is grayish, and she is surrounded by three pillows, each in one of the primary colors we’re taught in school. She wears a white dress because it reads high contrast against the gray background with her black gloves. “Color girl” is the technicians’ term for her. The image is used as a metric for skin-color balance, which technicians use to render an image as close as possible to what the human eye recognizes as normal. But there’s the rub: With a white body as a light meter, all other skin tones become deviations from the norm.

This bias to white skin causes the effects and artifacts in the photos you’ve posted of Michael Jackson which “prove” he had vitiligo. Brighter patches, highlights, seemingly uneven skin tones, light reflections, excessive redness – all caused by film stock designed for white skin. Don’t put much store in photos as proof of Michael Jackson’s vitiligo.

ShawntayUStay

What you say is true about film. For example, in films directed by black directors featuring all black casts, the lighting is absolutely gorgeous and the actors look very attractive (e.g. Look at any Tyler Perry film…well don’t watch them for real because they are crap, lmao). All the light is adjusted for darker skin tones. However, in many films with a majority white cast — with a scattering of black/brown actors — the lighting is adjusted for white skin, making the black actors look really really dark, sometimes to the point of comedy — all eye whites and teeth, LOL.

To compensate, makeup is done to create a reflection off the dark skin, resulting in unattractive greasy complexions not seen in minority directed film (e.g. “Doubt” with Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Viola Davis). Black actors literally look a mess.

Also ironic is many camera companies are in east Asia and still, in face detection modes, the camera think Asian eyes are “closed”, so the camera gives error messages. Go figure :-/

Pea

No one is going to “analyze” the photos you’ve uploaded, Michal; it would be a complete waste of time. Michael Jackson never had vitiligo, and his autopsy report proved it. He was bleaching his skin because he no longer wanted to be black — or, at the very least, look black. We know this because not only did he whiten his skin, he also compounded the effect by whittling his nose to the thickness of a pencil and claiming that white children were his biological offspring.

It just so happens that Jacko wrote a note dating back to late 1979 saying that he wanted to be different and wanted a completely different look and persona, and all of this preceded his transformation:

MJ will be my new name. No more Michael Jackson. I want a whole new character, a whole new look. I should be a tottally [sic] different person. People should never think of me as the kid who sang “ABC,” [or] “I Want You Back.”

As I said before, Dr. Arnold Klein was the person who helped Jacko with his dream of becoming a “totally different person”. He gave Jacko the heavy duty bleaching creams under the guise of treating “vitiligo” — but thanks to the autopsy, we know that Jacko didn’t have the disease.

So, the MJ Facts Team would appreciate if you stop clogging the comments’ section with claims that Jacko had “vitiligo”. He did not. Re-read the description within the “Microscopic Report” — specifically where it notes Jacko still had melanocytes — until you realize he lied.

ShawntayUStay

Two t’s in “totally”? Rose Fine clearly wasn’t a very good tutor. Lmao. And to think those two bodyguards, Bill Whitfield and Javon Beard, acted like MJ was Einstein in their book…says a lot about their [lack of] education. 😉

Michał Mańkowski

Yea, okay. He might have wanted to be completely different person and the fact is he exaggerated with his nose. You don’t have to convince me on this one 🙂 but even if he ever wanted to be white he must’ve decided it sometime in the middle of 80’s because I analyzed also many more pictures and I know that he was hiding white plotches at the end of 70’s and in the beginnig of 80’s. Otherwise how will you explain (yes, I know I am repeating myself) that when he was 20, 21 years old he had pale palms and neck which were dark again in later years? Still you didn’t give me any proof he didn’t have white spots. It is perfectly seeable in some of pictures that I sent. And one more example from me – I shared a series of nine pictures – did you know that the fifth and the sixth one were made almost at the same moment? But only in one of them you can see white spots. These are DEFINITELY white spots and the PICTURE was definitely made before Thriller album. Here you have this interview with his make up stylist 🙂 00:18-01:15 why would this woman lie? She’s describing her own experience of how she treated Jackson’s condition. That’s all.

And I know you will not change your mind, neither will I change mine. We might not get on the same waves with Michael Jackson but there are so many other interestic topics. You know, I mean that we don’t have to part our ways in enmity. I respect that you have your own opinion. There are not many of you guys on this site but you definitely seem to catch up on intelligence, clearness and independence. Have a pleasant day! 🙂

Sassy

I have to be honest, some of your other pages about Jimmy for example are good but this one is clutching at straws. Using Fox news and the mirror as sources to build an argument with is bad. Everyone knows that these media outlets are gossip and are sensational, and are profit making first and truth second. It’s the basic rule of MEDIA101 and you can’t use them as ‘valid’ sources to back your claims. I have never heard of the norweigan newspapers so I am not sure of their caliber.

However, I have always been interested in Omer and where he came from and why he stuck around and why he was in the front row at Michael’s funeral. He was obviously a massive part in the Jackson’s lives. The fact that there are family pictures with Omer in them makes me question things. I actually always wondered if Omer was actually legally adopted by MJ.

Thank you for your research though, I just think it needs to be more thorough. If what you say in your ‘home’ page about using facts to explain and show that Jackson’s behaviour was not ok, then I think you need to stick to just that. Facts.

Andreas Moss

There’s videointerviews with Omer online, and they are subtitled to english. He’s always somewhat uneasy talking about Michael Jackson, and even though he’s praising him in one sense, its clear there’s things he don’t want to talk about, and that’s what he says too. Some things about Michael he wants to keep private.

The whole world was and still is confused about Omer’s relationship with MJ, as he lived with him for six years as a child, and Michael claimed Omer was his biological son, but we know he wasn’t. He wasn’t adopted either, because both his parents worked at Neverland, and after Omer hit puberty he disappeared from MJs weird world.

Hi Sassy, we didn’t use Fox News or the Mirror to “build an argument”. They were mere additions to the core question that needs to be asked – after the supposed trauma the Chandler accusations caused Michael, why did he move a young boy into his home (and bed) just a short time later?

One answer could be that MJ lied about how badly the Chandler accusations affected him, and he was merely trying to garner sympathy to further strengthen his victimhood status.

Another answer could be that he was traumatized, but his compulsion to sleep with young boys was so powerful that it overwhelmed any negative repercussions that might result.

Why do you think he moved a new bed mate into his home after the brouhaha of the Chandler allegations?

Donna Massa-Chappee

Hi everyone,
I’m Donna Massa-Chappee author/Illustrator of The Untold Stories Behind “The Michael Jackson Series.” I have read this very interesting article.
Speculation is contagious. Celebrities are under a microscope. Privacy is precious and hard to achieve. In my book there is an illustration title, Peter Pan. There is a full description beside this illustration that symbolically describes the relationship Michael has with a young abused, confused and traumatized boy. None of us can go deep into the minds of others. We don’t spend every waking hour with people even the ones most close to us. It is unfair to judge a person by what we see, hear, or by their behavioral patterns. This doesn’t necessarily mean we know them, personally and intimately. I have seen relationships between fathers and sons especially if they are single father’s. Many times children will sleep in the same bed with their parents or parent. It can be based on habit or security reasons. Boys like to be boys. They hang out together all the time, do qurky things, and act completely foolish. There are the Boy Scouts, little league, boy’s club of America etc. Boys/men sometimes feel more comfortable with other boys/men then women. They can be themselves, let their defences down feeling less guarded. Their called men’s men, the brothers and the newest slang term bro time.
With Michael he was raised religious and Jesus was an important factor in his beliefs. Because of his intense and strict upbringing as a singer/ performer with only his brothers he never had the opportunity to develope his own friendships with other like minded boys. He missed out being a real boy, act foolish and do stupid things of choice making many mistakes. Michael was shy, he felt more comfortable with boys especially younger boys. I believe for two reasons, they brought an innocence, openness, purity, and a naive quality to the relationship. Michael never experienced this growing up. He felt it was refreshing and took him away from the expectations and responsibility’s of being a grown up mega Popstar. Also he wanted to be a father, and loved to nurture all children. Needing brothely love he wanted to mentor, give, share, inspire and help many young boys to become something, especially at such an impressionable young age. With Michael his carreer came first. Being around women was easier as friends then intimate relationships. Michael didn’t understand the complexities of women. Relations with women on certain levels were difficult for him. He loved women, all women and was attracted to them, and needed them in his life, but he was slowely maturing in this area especially long term relationships and Intimacy. I don’t have all the answers I really don’t, but from my perspective and what happened to me perhaps by reading my book you may see Michael in a very different light.
It is important to understand I was not a devoted fan, I did not attend his tours or concerts, and I never had the opportunity to see or meet him.
What I have come to know and understand is that Michael was a highly gifted artist, and evolved soul. He was also a multi-talented visionary. He had the ability to enjoy and balance masculine as well as feminine essence. He was definitely child-like but not childish. He was eccentric as most highly creative artist are. Unfortunately he was vastly misunderstood, and acted in ways that were unacceptable to society trapped in a old age world where speculation was indeed infectious… <3

You started by writing:None of us can go deep into the minds of others. We don’t spend every waking hour with people even the ones most close to us. It is unfair to judge a person by what we see, hear, or by their behavioral patterns. This doesn’t necessarily mean we know them, personally and intimately.
yet proceeded to give us an in depth analysis of MJ’s motivations, behavior and goals.

The problem with your analysis of MJ’s relationships with women and boys is that you need to somehow fit the following facts into your narrative.

– The child erotica featuring photos of naked boys;
– The two polaroids of boys found in his bedroom – one of a naked boy, another of a semi naked boy;
– The gay sex books found in MJ’s bedroom, including a manual on how to perform various gay sex acts;
– The huge amount of porn found in various rooms all over Neverland with hundreds of fingerprints on them (but only 9 of MJ’s);
– The various porn items found which were totally disrespectful to women, featuring rape themes, scat, fisting, “rear end wrecking” and other nasty themes;
– The allegations of child molestation in 1993 and 1994 which resulted in multimillion dollar payouts to two boys and their families to prevent the cases reaching court;
– MJ never agreeing to be interviewed by law enforcement over his relationships with young boys;
– The total lack of believable romantic female relationships in his life;
– His placing of children in ambiguous situations where people may view them as victims;
– His lack of accountability and transparency in his relationships with children; and
– His plagiarism.

I’m not trying to make MJ out to be a total baddie here, nor asking you to explain or make excuses for the above. I’m pointing out that your view of MJ is dehumanizing. Failing to see both his light and dark side is a mistake that many people make, a mistake that prevents the truth from surfacing. Don’t fall into that trap.

Kat

I found Donna’s comment to be genuinely disturbing, to be honest. It reads like idol worship taken to the highest level possible. A person believing that they somehow know someone that they never met, know what’s in their soul… Very unsettling!

Andreas Moss

I also think Donna’s comparison to scouts sleeping together, kids sleeping in bed with their parents, etc vs sleeping with unrelated boys/children is one that falls flat. Its not even remotely the same.

The reason its difficult to make a 40 year old man constantly sleeping in the same bed with little unrelated boys sound normal is because its not normal.

I meant to add that in my reply too Andreas. You are right, it’s not even remotely close. This is a very touchy point for fans because they know how bad it looks. I’ve heard all sorts of crazy excuses for them.

The favorite excuse is the false equivalence – children sleep with their parents, scared children will crawl into bed with their babysitter, things like that. It’s not the same.

They weren’t “sleepovers” either, in the traditional sense that a 12 year old will visit his friends house and sleep in the same room. Boys will sleep in bunk beds or on a pull-out bet, they won’t sleep together in the same bed. (That would be gay! to quote one of my friend’s sons lol). MJ and the boys shared a bed. There was no innocent reason for that.

I was having an email conversation with someone who said “What amazes me is how people get caught up in the talent thing, it has nothing to do with it. Any normal 40 year old man invites the neighborhood kids into his bed would be tarred and feathered.”

This is entirely correct. No-one else who slept with boys for over 1,000 nights gets the benefit of the doubt, and the time for giving MJ the benefit of the doubt is over.

Kat

Yes, that too. I wanted to write a reply, but now I see that MJ Facts has already pretty much said what I wanted to… The boy scout thing, for example, Donna’s comparison was a complete misfire; Boy Scouts of America organisation prohibit an adult person and a child being alone, a second person has to be present at all times. It further disallows adults and children using the bathrooms simultaneously and adult people sharing the same accommodation. Adults are required to respect the privacy and boundaries of children, anything less than that isn’t tolerated. Nearly every youth serving organisation has such laws, because these places attract child sex offenders, so the laws must be there to minimize the likelihood of abuse happening.

To be fair to the person who wrote it, she’s a Michael Jackson defender, so that automatically makes her someone who supports kids sleeping with unrelated adult men, like it’s a perfectly normal thing. BTW, I suspect that these people condone this type of behavior only when it comes to their beloved Michael. If they would find out that a dirty, creepy looking middle aged man who hangs out by kids’ playgrounds and watches the children play then invites them to spend the night in his house and his bed, they would have a completely different reaction.

Andreas Moss

Yes, you are right, Kat. They seem to make an exception because its Michael Jackson, a person they trust and love, and a person they believe was above other ‘normal’ people, so he therefore deserves special rules.

Still, by defending his actions they are throwing a gift package to child molesters all around the world, because child molesters could simply refer to Michaels comments about it only being “love, pure and innocent”, it being what the world needs right now, and so on. If this was normalized it would put a lot more children in harmful situations. This is not fans goal, to be fair, but it still is a possible consequence of them defending Jackson sleeping in bed with little boys.

We shouldn’t expect fans admitting to Jackson being a child molester any time soon, but it’d be a great step by them of admitting the sleepovers was wrong.

Kat

That is correct, and that’s something that we’ve already discussed on this site, and something that a lot of MJ realists have spoken about – that putting children in isolated, ambiguous situations should be promoted or accepted as normal. And that even if Jackson didn’t actually molest the boys he spend the night with he still endangered the well-being of kids everywhere by advertising it as an activity everyone should do.

Unfortunately many fans swallow up everything Jackson said like it’s some sort of religious dogma, not to be disputed by anyone. If Michael Jackson said that sleeping with children is wonderful, then that’s how it is! If he said that’s what everyone should do, it means everyone should do it! Then they also often fall on the same excuses used by actual pedophiles – a bed doesn’t equal sex, don’t be dirty minded; a child and an adult can be alone together without anything sexual going on; a grown man can spend all his spare time with kids and have no interest in adults, it doesn’t make a him a pedo, and et cetera.

Pea

“And that even if Jackson didn’t actually molest the boys he spend the night with he still endangered the well-being of kids everywhere by advertising it as an activity everyone should do.”

I never really understood this argument — that even if Jacko wasn’t a molester, his bed-sharing was “still harmful” because it put kids in “ambiguous situations”. If Jacko wasn’t a pedophile, his sleepovers would be sad, not dangerous. Sad in the sense that Jacko really was a grown man who was so petrified of adulthood and so traumatized in his youth that he’d want to use his wealth to relive every stereotypical childhood pastime (like sleepovers) in an effort to re-do a time in his life that should’ve been placid and joyful.

If Jacko wasn’t a molester, when he said, “What’s wrong with sharing a love?” and “The most loving thing you can do is share your bed,” he meant it in his deluded, regressed mind. It wouldn’t be his fault if pedophiles used bed-sharing lasciviously because Jacko was pure-hearted, impotent, and asexual.

So, you can’t castigate Jacko’s bed-sharing if he wasn’t using them as a route to sex. I would argue that inter-generational bed-sharing between unrelated persons, in general, isn’t bad at all if sex isn’t on the agenda. It literally would be just being in bed next to someone else. And because this is exactly what fans believe, they don’t have a problem defending Jacko’s sleepovers…

Andreas Moss

When Diane Sawyer asked if he didn’t put the children in ambiguous situations, I got the impression she meant it more in combination with the earlier allegations, and that people would wonder about the nature of the sleepovers, if something happened to the children, and that this would affect the children too, even if nothing happened.

I think the part with Bashir where he starts getting defensive and says the whole world should sleep with children, related or unrelated, is the part that could be potentially dangerous. If taken as ‘dogma’. And that would be the case even if he wasn’t a child molester.. Lets say Jackson was as innocent as the fans likes to think, his philosophy of bedsharing still could be used as a way for real child molesters to normalize sleepovers with children.

Pea

No, it would be unfair to blame a naif on the foul intentions of pedophiles. Jacko, had he been innocent like he claimed to be, wouldn’t be responsible.

It’s ironic, though, that you all mention the danger of his broadcasting his bed routines across the airwaves as a sort of (unintentional?) call-to-arms to pedophiles. That’s exactly what the fans believe: Jacko was/is being pilloried as a pedophile so that pedophiles could use his popularity to normalize their lifestyles. (It sounds absurd just typing it!)

I don’t think Jacko had that much power. If he was innocent, most people would say, “Oh, he’s clearly a regressed, asexual (rich, famous, talented) nutjob who needs therapy, but he’s essentially harmless — so he can have his little sleepovers in his make-believe Neverland.” But they would restrict it to only Jacko. I don’t think it would spread beyond his gilded bubble.

We know the reality of Jacko’s sleepovers, and we know that since he knowingly lied about them to Bashir — describing them as involving soft music, bedtimes stories, warm milk, and cookies — they were far from innocent.

But, in general, if sex wasn’t involved, it’s just bed-sharing; it’s not really that big of a deal.

Andreas Moss

If this hypotethical Jackson really thought it was innocent and good for everyone to share beds, and he proclaimed it even more than he did AND it had some effect, he would obviously be responsible for child molesters going to bed with children, no matter if his intentions were good.

Now your argument is you think nobody would take this seriously anyway. I can see what you mean. Certainly his comments fell back on him with the Bashir documentary when he talked about this, but you have to see that in the context that he already was an accused child molester, so people found it concerning that he still had these sleepovers, and made comments like that.

I’m sure some people see him the way you propose, but I’m not sold that everyone does. He clearly was a ‘prophet’ to many, just based on his musical career and his humanitarian work. I do not doubt for a second quite a few people would take his word to heart solely on face value. Songs like Earthsong and Heal The World were also very very naive, and they seemed to represent a sentimental childlike worldview that appeals to many people, and being childlike would also mean trusting. (I personally think his message overall in his music is potentially damaging.) I think he had a lot of influence on many people, even with the sleepovers, and he knew how to work people, and to get what he wanted. Its not that difficult to prove really, as he manipulated many mothers to let their son sleep with him.

pluijm2

But it hardly ever is just that, is it? I can understand two teenage friends crash in the same bed after a night in the town, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. Furthermore that wouldn’t happen night after night. Most people and children prefer a bed of their own unless they are in a relationship with the person they share the bed with.

Pea

I agree with you: most adults wouldn’t even think to sleep with the same unrelated kid night after night, which is why Jacko had the perceptual problem that he did. Even if one takes into account that some kids have trusted godparents, Jacko still didn’t fit the bill. For instance, Joy Robson and Lisbeth Barnes (*cough* bad mothers! *cough*) simply allowed their sons to sleep with Jacko on the first visits to Neverland, Joy on the first day and Lisbeth before the first week was over. They didn’t know him from any other stranger!

What I was articulating in that comment was what fans believe, and the difficultly in logically, rather than gutturally, refuting the notion of Jacko’s sleepovers being “bad” if one accepts the idea that Jacko was a regressed, asexual man-child. But, as you said, it hardly ever is that. And Jacko had heaps of pornography ready for the boys to view. At the very least, fans should acknowledge that large amounts of porn indicate someone who may have an sexual impulse problem and therefore shouldn’t be in bed with kids — we’ve all heard of horror stories in which a man highly aroused by viewing porn for hours has raped a kid, either sex being fair game.

Kat

What Andreas said + some other matters. Firstly it’s the fact that MJ made kids think it was normal to sleep in one bed and bedroom with unrelated grown men. Which means that these children believed it was a normal thing, which means that someone else could take the same child, put them in the same situation, and then molest them. That’s what Dianne Sawyer meant when she said that loving children and being a responsible adult meant keeping them away from unclear situations. To which Jackson responded with one of his usual ‘it’s on the level of pure love and innocence, it’s the children who always want to stay with me and I can’t say no’, and so on.

Secondly is the fact that children, like all human being, have the rights to privacy, personal space, and boundaries. And they should be respected! That’s why it’s not OK for an adult to shower with kids, or walk into the bathroom when a child is using it, or have a sleepover where children take their clothes off in front of the adult and then hop in the same bed with them. A kid should do these things alone, or maybe with another child, if it’s a slumber party, but not with an unrelated adult.

Thirdly, and this is no less important, this should be avoided to protect one from false sexual abuse allegations. If, let’s say, I spend ten nights in one bedroom with a child and later he or she accuses me of molestation, I have no way of proving I didn’t do it, because there’s no transparency in the circumstances. That’s why youth serving organisations have rules against such arrangements; it’s not only for the safety of kids, but of adults too.

That’s interesting Pea, you say that a much older person sharing a bed with an unrelated youngster isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but since when is it accepted? We live in a world where adults don’t sleep with children that aren’t their own. That’s how it is in pretty much all cultures and countries. And again, how are you to know that nothing sexual goes on? Michael Jackson practically invited pedophile allegations with such irresponsible behavior. He spent hundreds of nights with some of his boys, and it’s completely justified if people question it and wonder what went on.

I guess you could argue that MJ was so delusional, childish, and developmentally stunted that he didn’t realize how wrong his actions were. But his mind seemed to be working fine in other areas, considering that he was a savvy businessman, among other things. He was able to think clearly, and therefore knew that doing that wasn’t right. At any right, I’m against adults sleeping with unrelated children, I don’t think it should be normalized.

Rock

Really, what’s not damaging about isolating children from their peers, keeping some of them out of school entirely, so they can be bedfellows of a needy and psychologically screwed up 40 year old who thinks he’s Peter Pan? Sexual abuse isn’t the only way to harm a child.

Kat, I will never understand why fans don’t have a problem with this. I had one fan tell me once “It was OK because Michael isn’t capable of molestation”. I could never get a good explanation of what they meant by that.

One possibility I’ve been thinking of is that there is a disconnect in their minds. Everyone has their own internal dictionary and I think for many people the word “pedophile” means the opposite of what MJ was. To many people a pedophile is ugly, nasty, creepy, cruel, and repellent to children – (whereas we know he is the guy who kids adore and parents trust).

This disconnect between reality and their internal dictionary means that they can easily separate the terms “Michael Jackson” and “pedophile”, for them the two together is an alien concept.

Yet even when you show them examples of “nice guy” molesters they still don’t make the connection. There must be something more that is blocking them from seeing the plain truth that MJ’s relationships with children were unhealthy at best. Why do they want to believe the fairy tale about the lost childhood or the fiction that the children ask to sleep with Michael?

I just don’t get it. As we’ve been saying, take the name and image of MJ out of this story and it would be just another tale of a pervert that MJ fans would condemn. They would scoff at the excuses that they readily believe coming from their idol.

Kat

To be honest when I first heard about MJ claiming there was nothing wrong with sleeping in one bed with children I didn’t immediately think it meant he was a molester. For me it was just another weird thing from a guy who liked to climb trees, dressed his pet chimp human baby clothes, and believed himself to be Peter Pan. It was later when I learned more about the issue that I realized how wrong it was – an adult male should never sleep in one bed with an unrelated child, because, statistically speaking, these men are most likely to abuse children. I also had to put it in the right contest, I sort of had imagined the whole sleeping with kids things as a big slumber party or whatever. But then I read about Jordie Chandler, and realized that it couldn’t have been further from the truth. There were no slumber parties where everyone was welcome to join, Jackson deliberately isolated a kid of his liking and spent night after night with him behind closed doors with an elaborate alarm system on them. So I think it’s important to learn as much as possible about something to know what was really going on.

I have no problems seeing and admitting that Jackson was a pedophile, because I never believed his tales of being child-like, vulnerable, unable to hurt anyone, or searching for a childhood he never knew. Through his whole career there were rumors, people saying that he wasn’t who he presented himself to be to the public, so I don’t know why anyone would believe his tripe. However many people take what he said publicly at face value.

Lots of people still hold on to outdated perceptions of what makes a pedophile – stranger, funny-looking, suspect, offers kids candy or in other ways tries to entice them away. Fortunately there are people who are working hard to change those old notions, so that we can protect our children better. To be fair I can understand why people prefer to think that a pedophile is certainly the creepy stranger type. Nobody wants to acknowledge that the person molesting their kid is also their husband or boyfriend, their brother, a close family friend, or the babysitter that they trust their children to be alone with. It’s hard to accept it, so people rather don’t.

Donna Massa-Chappee

Questions: Did you live with Michael? Were you intimate with Michael? Did you know his family and his friends? Did you know his children? Did your ever have a one on one personal conversation with Michael. Have you talked to people who knew Michael well, co-workers, staff, family & close friends?

You can shove all the documentation in front of me, it still doesn’t mean a thing. People own sex toys, indulge in erotic behavior, own sex magazines, have the (Red Rooms) etc. Attend special exclusive parties where sex is on all levels, yet none of these people are held responsible for their intimate sexual choices. It’s nobody’s business. A celebrity, politician or any high profile individual has a microscope upon them 24-7. They know the rules, why would anybody leave all this stuff out in the open to find if they were guilty. Usually people who are guilty are shrewd and hide or burn all evidence leaving nothing behind. Walk in anyone’s home unannounced, go through their home and personal belongings and you’ll be surprised as to what you’ll find.

Please lets end this conversation it is going nowhere, especially when you see in today’s local and World News what is important and really going on out there. Then when you have the time read or watch 50 Shades of Gray and the last series of True Detectives.

Questions: Did you live with Michael? Were you intimate with Michael? Did you know his family and his friends? Did you know his children? Did your ever have a one on one personal conversation with Michael. Have you talked to people who knew Michael well, co-workers, staff, family & close friends?

I can answer “no” to most of those questions. However Jordan Chandler, Jason Francia, Gavin Arvizo, Wade Robson and Jimmy Safechuck lived with Michael, were intimate with Michael, knew his family and his friends and knew his children. They had one on one personal conversations with Michael, they talked to people who knew Michael well, co-workers, staff, family & close friends – so I believe their word more than I believe someone who relies on MJ’s PR image to learn who he really was.

Unfortunately for fans, people who knew Michael really well say he is a child molester, so please don’t start with your “did you know him?” questions.

As for the huge amounts of porn (and alcohol, and drugs) MJ had lying around Neverland, you need to understand that MJ insisted that the estate was designed for children and childlike activities, so it was his responsibility to ensure it was a child safe environment at all times.

To compare MJ to just any other celebrity is inconsistent and deceitful. MJ held himself out as a protector of children, so the standards he needed to adhere to were much higher than anyone who only invited adults into their bedroom.

Kat

You didn’t know Michael Jackson, Donna, I don’t believe you ever met him even for three minutes or had one meaningful conversation with him. And yet you offered an in-depth psychological portrait of who he was as a person! I wonder what made you do that – psychoanalyze a person you never met as if you had spent many therapy sessions with him during which you discussed his hard childhood. I’m sure many of us found that to be curious.

Many of the things you said I don’t even know where you got them from. Jesus was important in Michael’s life? He liked being with boys, because they were innocent and pure? Like, aren’t female children the same? He understood little boys excellently, but didn’t understand the complexities of women? Um, what?

It also looks like you dodged what MJ Facts said by asking counter-questions. It’s clear why you lot – MJs defenders – choose to disregard these details; they ruin the fantasy of him that you have in your minds. It’s normal to have sex toys or engage in kinky sexual behavior and so on, as long as it’s between consenting adults. It’s not OK to have those things around children. Also – someone undeveloped and childish wouldn’t be interested in any of that.

Joni Hector Storhammar

I’m starting to think Liberace had a big influence on MJ. They had pretty similar dress sense and similar decoration sense. Meaning they both liked shiny things on their clothes and the decoration of the houses was like that of a french king. And Liberace also had a young companion who had plastic surgery to look like him. Maybe that’s where MJ got the idea that he could get away with stuff like that too. Denying the gay rumours seemed to be another common thing.

Liberace and the Jacksons were neighbors in Encino, and Michael spent a lot of time at “Uncle Lee’s” house as a boy. I don’t know if they remained close or not. They seem quite close in the many photos available online.

Another interesting tidbit I found, MJ didn’t start wearing one glove “to hide his vitiligo” as fans have been insisting, but rather so that the audience would be able to see his dance moves more clearly.

That story is about the Arvizos never asking for money over their allegations about MJ. Perhaps I should “talk about the past of Gavin’s mother” to show how it strengthens the case against MJ, where a supposed “grifter” didn’t want to profit from her son’s molestation.

Reason why you are ignorant. The Peter Pan syndrome is much more than that. You must read the book. You must read the book The Peter Pan Syndrome: Men Who Have Never Grown Up by Dr. Dan Riley. Amazing book.

I read a summary of the book. It appears to have nothing to do with Michael Jackson’s behavior. If you are suggesting it does, then you are suggesting MJ was a narcissist. Is that what you are saying?

They could, but that’s beside the point. MJ had those magazines (not 500+ lol) for his boy buddies to “accidentaly find”. We know they weren’t for MJ – only 9 of his fingerprints were found on the entire collection, while nearly 700 fingerprints belonging to other people were found on them.

Believe it or no, I’m studying psychology for 3 years now

Receipts required.

“So someone who is accused only twice can’t be a pedophile? Fascinating.” Wow. That’s exactly what I said… Pedophiles commit mostly 100+ crimes. THAT’s what I wrote.

“Pedophiles commit mostly 100+ crimes”. I said he had been accused twice. According to Wade, MJ committed well over that number of crimes just with him – add in Jonathan, Jimmy, Jordan, Brett, Gavin and Omer and the total will be be way, way more than that.

Again, you must see Take 2 🙂 Michael’s lawyer and personal explained that kids could not come in contact with alcohol and drugs. Only a few kids stated to have slept in the same bedroom as Michael and only one said in the same bed.

I’m sure they would say say that. Some people will do anything for money.

You’re simpling talking shit 🙂

Then why are you here? You certainly don’t know as much about MJ as I do, and you seem to like men who take young boys to bed with them. Why not toddle of to a fan site where you can indulge your illusions. You might like MJJ Community, they will welcome you with open arms. If you want to learn the truth, stay.

Pea

“What’s funny it’s that she’s comparing albino’s to people with vitiligo. Only with THAT you can tell that she has no idea of what she’s talking about.”

Sorry, Florence. It isn’t my fault Jacko’s white skin, upon a histological examination, was more consistent with skin bleaching than vitiligo:

Microscopic examination of involved skin shows a complete absence of
melanocytes in association with a total loss of epidermal pigmentation.

Sections of skin (slide U) show no melanocytic pigment. Melanocytes, although present, are reduced in number.

Yeah, that’s not vitiligo! LOL.

You’re also missing a critical point of that snippet I pasted: it said “microscopic examination of involved skin”, meaning only the histology of Jacko’s white skin — the skin he claimed was white due to vitiligo! — was not evidencing characteristics consistent with actual vitiligo. Melanocytes being present in the portions of skin unaffected by vitiligo, i.e. the brown skin, would be expected… and totally irrelevant to the issue.

“Actually if Michael never had vitiligo, it would be impossible to whiten his whole face. Impossible.”

Baseball player Sammy Sosa made a damned good effort; imagine what Jacko could do with his buckets of cash:

Jacko reportedly used both bleaching creams and white makeup which likely explained his pasty appearance.

But isn’t it telling, Florence, that Michael Jackson’s evasiveness about his alleged skin condition so nicely foreshadowed an autopsy finding that he didn’t actually have vitiligo? I love it when things work out! 🙂

So, you are studying psychology. I also learned psychology, for 5 year in bachelor degree and 2 years for my master degree.

Homosexual could not kiss girl? They can. I have friends who are homosexual, they could kiss girl if they want it. They even could have sex with girl but they did not satisfy with it.

Please, I learned psychology as well and now is continuing using my expertise to analyze and furthermore diagnose people. But I totally have different opinion about MJ. After reviewing all of the facts presented in this website, seeing documentary videos in how he describing the boy and how he loves the boy so much, and how he made rationalization about ‘sharing bed’ with boy as a normal thing and proof of love and sweetness, I do have strong thought he was a male pedophilia who loved male child.

And “Homosexuality encompasses a variety of phenomena related to a same-sex sexual orientation.” So simple to understand homosexual only from the definition. From my experience studying 7 years on psychology, before you diagnose person, first thing first, understand the definition. Later when you want to diagnose, try capturing the symptoms and analyze which symptoms repeated develop certain pattern.

Try to see MJ as a person who you did not know. There could not be like and dislike or personal interest in doing the good diagnose on people, Florence. That is really the code of conduct in psychology right? So what I m gonna say is, if your opinion is personal, make it personal. Don’t use ‘I am learning psychology for 3 years now’ to make a defense. Cause from the way you talk about homosexual, is somehow ridicules and didn’t show you have learned so well about psychology.

florence

i’ve studied Human Sciences for 1 year and then Psychology with Latin for 2 years.
“Homosexual could not kiss girl? They can. I have friends who are homosexual, they could kiss girl if they want it. They even could have sex with girl but they did not satisfy with it.”

Then they’re not homosexuals. I guess they’re bisexual. A homosexual men feel attracted to men. Btw, they can get excited with pictures of women but they will not have sex/kiss them just for pleasure. Like you said, they weren’t satisfied. Why would they do something that doesn’t satisfy them?

“Please, I learned psychology as well and now is continuing using my expertise to analyze and furthermore diagnose people. But I totally have different opinion about MJ. After reviewing all of the facts presented in this website, seeing documentary videos in how he describing the boy and how he loves the boy so much, and how he made rationalization about ‘sharing bed’ with boy as a normal thing and proof of love and sweetness, I do have strong thought he was a male pedophilia who loved male child.”

I’m pretty sure you’re not studying psychology. The ”facts” presented here aren’t even real. The writer already have a opinion about MJ: he’s a pedophile for him, and a liar. So he would make research about how to prove he was, he would not analyze the things on MJ’s part. Someone who’s studying psychology would see that but you seem to not. How did he describe the boy? He said one, two times that McCulkin was kind but he never made a full description of any of those boys. He said children were a gift from god but never said anything that could be interpreted in a sexual way about them. He said you were also sharing your bed with kids when you was watching a movie, sitting on a bed and that’s true.

“he made rationalization about ‘sharing bed’ with boy as a normal thing and proof of love and sweetness,”

Rationalization? No. He said that, sleeping with kids, with sexual intentions was wrong. But that he would never do something like that. Coming back to your studies: you examined his behavior as a adult but didn’t take a look at his background. His mother was a fervent christian, and so was he. He didn’t had enough time to play so he didn’t came in contact with porn, or drugs when he was little. He experimented such things later. He didn’t saw things the way we do. Take a picture of a old woman (60) kissing a young boy (20) and show this to youths. What would they say? Nasty. I don’t find such things nasty. I think that when two people love each other, no matter they age, it’s a beautiful thing. And so did Michael. He saw everything with different eyes because he had a completely different education.

ShawntayUStay

George Michael said that he had sex with many woman during his Wham! days and it wasn’t like he didn’t feel pleasure being with them in that capacity but he said that he didn’t love them. He wasn’t emotionally interested in them; he loved men (emotionally and physically). He identifies as gay, not bisexual.

florence

“He wasn’t emotionally interested in them.”
But he was physically? I said before psychology is something you can interprate in many ways. I identifies him as bisexual, he may identifies himself as homosexual. The question is why did he have sex with those women if he wasn’t interested in them? To calm his libido? I know some heterosexuals men in prisons have sex with each other, only because they have no woman available. But if George Michael could have sex with other men why did he choose women? To me, he’s bisexual.

Pea

LOL. Yes, Florence, we’re all totally going to defer to your classification of George Michael’s sexuality, rather than George himself. George Michael had sexual relationships with women because he wasn’t ready to come out as “gay” — as I said before, this is a very common pathway for gays to go down. And, as expected, once George accepted himself, he never slept with another woman.

Men in prison are not the same as a gay/lesbian person who has not come to terms with their sexuality; gays and lesbians prefer the same sex. Prison inmates engage in homosexual acts for a various number of reasons — female unavailability, domination, torture/abuse, etc. But they usually don’t prefer same-sex partners, although I’m sure some begin to prefer it via conditioning.

In other words, there is a difference between merely engaging in homosexual — or heterosexual — behavior, and being homosexual or heterosexual because of a preference. Where did you study psychology again? Online? I still am trying to understand why you’re trying to argue about what constitutes a sexuality. Michael Jackson wasn’t “gay”, but a homosexual pedophile. He used his phony marriages to hide the fact he loved boys….

Pea

Florence, you don’t even need a psychology degree of any level (and, apparently, Sherca’s is a bit more involved than yours) to see that Jacko was a homosexual pedophile — as Sherca described, a male sexually (and I’d add wager emotionally) attracted to young boys.

The etiology of Jacko’s homosexual pedophilia seems to be linked to his having been sexually abused by adult men. From their own words and stories (and the best reference is straight from the proverbial horse’s mouth), many homosexual pedophiles had contact with adult men or even older brothers/boys when they were boys too young for sex; but because these sexually abusive encounters have become eroticized in their minds, they’ve linked man-boy contact with positive emotions and feelings, as well as pleasure, and therefore do not view themselves as victims of abuse even though they were.

Additionally, and compounding his condition, Jacko also had a very strained relationship with his father. According to J. Randy Taraborrelli, Jacko resignedly hated many things about Joe Jackson: that he was hard, cold, and didn’t understand religion. He was abusive, too. But Jacko also deeply desired a relationship with him, as would any boy.

It is then no surprise that Jacko had some of his ‘special friends’, whom he slept with and allegedly sexually molested, call him “Daddy”, and why he seemed to always have the boy + mother around, and never the fathers. It’s practically Freudian.

“Take a picture of a old woman (60) kissing a young boy (20) and show this to youths. What would they say? Nasty. I don’t find such things nasty. I think that when two people love each other, no matter they age, it’s a beautiful thing.”

People past their prime shouldn’t be siphoning life from younger people. In fact, that’s what Jacko was doing when he “chose” boys of particular ages, usually between 7-14, to be his playmates and bedmates and then chucked them in the trash. All one has to do is read “The Michael Jackson Tapes” to learn how Jacko viewed kids as objects. You sound just like him, by the way; no wonder you support his pedo ways. 🙁

florence

“Florence, you don’t even need a psychology degree of any level (and, apparently, Sherca’s is a bit more involved than yours) to see that Jacko was a homosexual pedophile — as Sherca described, a male sexually (and I’d add wager emotionally) attracted to young boys.”

All these are hypotheses. I’ve doubt about Sherca’s studies seeing how she analyze things without looking at the background of the subject and his view of things. Neither you, neither me ever met Michael, and you seem to have no clue of what psychology/human sciences is.

“The etiology of Jacko’s homosexual pedophilia seems to be linked to his having been sexually abused by adult men. From their own words and stories (and the best reference is straight from the proverbial horse’s mouth), many homosexual pedophiles had contact with adult men or even older brothers/boys when they were boys too young for sex; but because these sexually abusive encounters have become eroticized in their minds, they’ve linked man-boy contact with positive emotions and feelings, as well as pleasure, and therefore do not view themselves as victims of abuse even though they were.”

He was physically abused by his father. By a man. Not by men. But never in a sexual way. He have been threatened but I don’t remember him saying he had been sexually abused. It’s not because you have been abused that you have to abuse people later. Some kids grows up with parents who smoke. Some find it a reason to never touch a cigaret, others start smoking really young/later. According to Katherine Jackson, Michael was a really sensitive kid. Michael didn’t knew porn as a kid, how would he eroticize something? You’re using the word ”pleasure” while he said himself that he wanted to vomit everytime he saw Joe. And he saw himself as a victim. He said it himself.

“Although most victims of child sexual abuse do not become offenders, research indicates that many offenders are former victims. ”

Because Michael Jackson molested boys, that is a strong indication that he himself was molested as a child.

As for your references to smoking, that’s false equivalency. Someone who is supposedly studying a degree would know that is a poor method of debating.

Pea

Don’t forget the other part, MJFacts, in which Ken Lanning suggests that there could be a significant link between how an offender offends and how he was abused as a child:

Although most victims of child sexual abuse do not become offenders, research indicates that many offenders are former victims. It might be worth the investigator’s time and effort to determine, if possible, whether a suspect had ever been sexually victimized as a child and, more importantly, what was the nature of the victimization (i.e., age it occurred, relationship with offender, acts performed).

page 39 (PDF page 49)

Florence is like many fans who out-and-out refuse to acknowledge the gamut of Michael Jackson’s trauma history. According to J5 drummer Johnny Jackson, Jacko was sexually abused by a male employee of the Jacksons and a male relative. Johnny said that he saw 12-year-old Jacko and the two men nude, and they all appeared to be sexually aroused. La Toya Jackson has said similar.

Florence took exception to my comment about Michael Jackson’s “daddy issues” and how it compounded his alleged pedophilic attraction to boys. There have also been rumors that Jacko was molested by Joe Jackson, according to Bob Jones, and that he was molested by a mentor in the music industry.

So, considering Lanning’s comments about the relationship between an offender’s abuse history, specifically the context in which the abuse happened, and how the offender molests his targets, it could underscore those rumors and indicate that Jacko was molested by men he was close or related to when he was a boy, or even his own father. This would explain why he developed father-son relationships — or mentor-apprentice relationships — with the boys he chose as his ‘special friends’.

As I said, it’s practically Freudian: Jacko sexualized adult-child interactions because, in his experience, the most significant interactions he’d had with men who were supposed to protect him had been sexual. Just a theory based on Lanning’s observations from the field!

Brett Barnes described Jacko as a “father brother, sister mother” rolled into one person. Wade Robson said Jacko wanted Wade to view him as his surrogate “Daddy”, since his own was back in Australia. James Safechuck began to view Jacko as even better than his own father. Notoriously, we have Omer Bhatti pretending to be Michael’s “secret son”. Jacko told Gavin Arvizo to believe that he was his “Daddy Michael”. (And of course, the fathers of these boys were usually absent, or allowed themselves to stay behind, as Jacko strutted around with the boys and their mothers.)

Sherca Tharagaze

And reading the way you write there, Pea, it is how the psychological analysis work. I think Florence have to read that to understand better; so she could study better. If only she wanted tho. Lol.

Contrary to Joe Kort’s blanket assertion that pedophiles “…are sexually aroused by extreme youth, not by gender”, Ken Lanning writes:
“Most pedophiles prefer children of a certain sex in a certain age range. In contrast to situational-type child molesters, “true” pedophiles seem to be more likely to prefer boys. The older the age preference of the pedophile, the more exclusive the gender preference. Pedophiles attracted to toddlers are more likely to molest boys and girls indiscriminately. A pedophile attracted to teenagers is more likely to prefer either boys or girls exclusively.” (http://www.mjfacts.com/resources/NC70.pdf p.41)

Ken Lanning makes it very clear that boys are the main targets of pedophiles, specifically because they are more likely to be attracted to male children. He says that unlike situational and intrafamilial molesters, acquaintance molesters are more likely to be boys. Lanning even says that the vast majority of child pornography features boys because that is the gender the vast majority of pedophiles prefer.

In his opinion, “men who victimize adolescent boys in my experience are the most persistent and prolific of all child molesters.” (p.108)

So following the data and listening to the expert, logically, boys are more likely abused by homosexual pedophiles than they are by heterosexual or bisexual pedophiles.

According to this scientific paper http://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(11)61074-4/fulltext, the current estimated prevalence of homosexual pedophilia is anywhere between 9 and 40% (as a percentage of pedophiles). Research seems to suggest that 1% of the population are pedophiles, so even at the lower end of that range, and with multiple victims per offender, that’s an awful lot of abuse that is attributable to gay pedophiles.

ShawntayUStay

I think that when two people love each other, no matter they age, it’s a beautiful thing. And so did Michael. He saw everything with different eyes because he had a completely different education.

Of course MJ did. That’s why he was a pedophile, duh! LOL at fan attempts to help out their idol. Smh.

He said that, sleeping with kids, with sexual intentions was wrong.

When, exactly, did MJ ever say this? I’m genuinely curious. I know he said to Diane Sawyer that his mind “doesn’t run that way” but then he said that people who do that “need help in some kind of way” instead of saying that people who molest children also need to be locked up. He said to Bashir “when you say bed, you’re thinking sexual; it’s not sexual”. But we also know that he unabashedly said “what’s wrong with sharing a love?” when asked about his boy sleepover habit, that he had no intention of stopping despite societal scorn for the practice.

Wait, I guess the closest thing would be his interview with Ed Bradley wherein Ed asks him if he’d let his own kids sleep in the bed with an unrelated adult, and MJ says “Well…if I know them.” Contradictory to his insistence that he be completely allowed to sleep with other people’s sons, no questions asked.

florence

“But
by which kind of ways? How the opinion presented in context of
psychology?”

Some
symptoms can only be attributed to a mental disorder, but others may be linked
to several mental lapses. A psychologist will give another diagnose than another.
The first one call you mentally insane, the other says you are too stressed. Some
criminals are perfectly mentally healthy but are called insane by some
psychologists.

‘’Psychology
is a science too. It should be based on facts combined with perspectives.’’

Not really.
A science? Yes. But psychology is not like mathematics, there’s not always one
correct answer. Like I said before, psychology could be interpreted in many
ways. You can only make hypotheses in psychology because you can never be 100%
sure. Someone can perfectly act like he’s dement while he isn’t. Pierre Bordein
is a perfect example.

“How the
opinion presented in context of psychology?”

You said ‘’perspectives’’.
What is a perspective for you? It’s basically the same thing as opinion.

“Some
people may use psychoanalysis to interpret, or behaviorism, or
humanism/existentialism. So tell me which one you choose to interpret MJ
behavior, personality, and his sexual preferences?”

I can ask
you the same question. I guess you mean humanistic psychology with “humanism”? How
would I make use of psychoanalysis, or humanistic psychology without having
sessions with MJ? We both know I’m not using behaviorism. Hypotheses. That’s
all. Hypotheses basing on what I see and hear. But tell me, which of those
methods do YOU use?

“I said the
person who study psychology or who become psychologist, should have {neutrality},
in {viewing} and diagnose people.”

“Neutral
view” -florence

Yay, there’s
clearly a difference!

“I learned
about MJ more in visual. MJ’s gesture, mimic, and the words he expressed in
various context.”

So you used
behaviorism? You made a ‘analysis’ based on MJ’s comportment in interviews and
tv-shows? What professional.

MJ used his
hands a lot when he was talking what seems to proof he had an open personality.
He also use the word ‘God’ often. I guess he was really religious.

“Including
how his opinion on children, and how he ‘loved’ children a lot.”

Wait… You
just used the word ‘’visual’’. But now you take account of his opinion? Most pediatrician’s
love children a lot (didn’t I already mention this as example? Anyway) but does
that make of them pedophiles?

“Including
his obsession to build Neverland, which present his symbolism of himself and
the way he wanted to relate with children.”

I don’t see
any mark of ‘’obsession’’. He saw a place he liked and chose to build a kind of
‘mini Disneyland’ for him, children AND (important to mention!) adults who accepted
to become children again. You immediately relate Neverland with children but
forget to mention that he also invited adults: Elizabeth, Janet, Eddy, Paul,
etc… I think Neverland symbolize a little more his childhood than himself. “Neverland
is everything I’ve never had as a child’’ -Michael. He wanted to relate with
children but again I don’t see what’s wrong with it. Most children with came
there were orphans or were sick. I think it shows how sensitive he was. Even if
he was a pedophile, like MJFacts like to claim, why would he give 500 million
to diverse associations, write such songs as Heal The World or bring so much
time in hospitals. Nobody forced him to do it, he was even ‘poor’ in the 00’s
but still gave money to such associations. I first thought it was to preserve a
good image but he did a lot that nobody knows.

“Later, I
found this website provides many facts that enriches my analysis.

This
website is having its subjectivity, yes. But it also mentioning the facts
first, later the author writes the analysis. I compared with fans site as well.”

Did you
verify the facts were correct? I’m not blaiming you or something but you said
yourself that this website was being subjective. So they mention ‘facts’ that
could hinder Michael’s reputation and hide the rest. If you want a good articles
here: https://vindicatemj.wordpress.com/

I found a
article on this website about MJFacts (aka the hold WackoFacts) who let’s see
how they write their ‘’articles’’. I invite you to take a look.

To Shawn….Tay,
you answered to your own comment and I’m a little tired of this so… :clap clap:

florence

“And “Homosexuality encompasses a variety of phenomena related to a same-sex sexual orientation.” So simple to understand homosexual only from the definition. From my experience studying 7 years on psychology, before you diagnose person, first thing first, understand the definition. Later when you want to diagnose, try capturing the symptoms and analyze which symptoms repeated develop certain pattern.”

Psychology is something that you can interprate in different ways. You basically can’t have the same view on psychology, so you HAVE to give your opinion. I have another definition of homosexuality in my theory-book but it’s in french:
‘Attirance sexuelle unique pour les personnes de son sexe (par opposition à hétérosexualité).’
What means: ONLY OF THE SAME GENDER. So your friends are not homosexuals because they feel attracted to women.

“Try to see MJ as a person who you did not know. There could not be like and dislike or personal interest in doing the good diagnose on people, Florence. That is really the code of conduct in psychology right? So what I m gonna say is, if your opinion is personal, make it personal. Don’t use ‘I am learning psychology for 3 years now’ to make a defense. Cause from the way you talk about homosexual, is somehow ridicules and didn’t show you have learned so well about psychology.”

I became a fan of the man before I became fan of the artist. Like you said, psychology is based on a neutral view. Like I said before, you HAVE to give a opinion in psychology. The way you’re trying to seem smart is quite funny because your ”analyze” was based on a subjective website who claims to be objective.

Pea

Florence, human sexuality is not fixed but along a spectrum. Some heterosexuals are more heterosexual than others; some homosexuals are more homosexual than others. You are defining it so narrowly to suit your own purposes, which is the antithesis of the objectivity required in any science (my background is in the biological sciences, FYI). As Sherca pointed out, the first step in any analysis is to understand the definition; if one is not presently available, you then have to make a definition that is reasonably exclusive and specific. Then, based on the definition, you assess whether the person/item/animal fits the features of the definition.

In my field of study, one can just use DNA. But when it comes to defining human behavior, there needs to be a bit more nuance. A rigid definition like, “a homosexual is someone who only feels sexually attracted to a member of the same sex” would be sufficient for some gays but not all. Instead, it would be better to say, “A homosexual is someone who is attracted to and prefers to be with a member of the same sex.” That explains people like George Michael, as Shawntay mentioned to you, who’s had sex with women but considers himself gay.

Also, many homosexuals came to accept their sexuality through a process. They may have kissed, dated, or even had sexual relations with the opposite sex; then they begin to define themselves as “bisexual”, which allows them to explore their homosexuality while not having to deal with the “gay” label that they may not have come to terms with; and, finally, when they have accepted themselves they come out as gay or lesbian.

Honestly, I don’t even know why you’re arguing over the definition anyway, Florence; Jacko was a homosexual pedophile, not “gay”.

Michael Jackson never had any believable female companions and, while there were some rumors of his being with men, they would’ve been ancillary to his real interest: boys. According to Jermaine Jackson’s book “You Are Not Alone”, Lisa Marie Presley was upset when he spent the night with Wade Robson, who was about 12 at the time, and Jacko no doubt slept in the same bed as Wade. Right after that divorce, he brought Omer Bhatti into his life. Humorously, he replaced Lisa Marie with an uglier woman and then divorced her and never went back to women, contrary to fan fantasy.

Your “fandom” blinds you to the truth that many can see objectively.

Sherca Tharagaze

|Psychology is something that you can interprate in different ways. You basically can’t have the same view on psychology, so you HAVE to give your opinion.|

Psychology opens for interpretation. Yes. But by which kind of ways? How the opinion presented in context of psychology? Psychology is a science too. It should be based on facts combined with perspectives. Some people may use psychoanalysis to interpret, or behaviorism, or humanism/existentialism. So tell me which one you choose to interpret MJ behavior, personality, and his sexual preferences?
And by the way, I think, without studying psychology, everybody could say opinions tho.

|Like you said, psychology is based on a neutral view.|

I did not say that. I said the person who study psychology or who become psychologist, should have neutrality, in viewing and diagnose people.

|The way you’re trying to seem smart is quite funny because your ”analyze” was based on a subjective website who claims to be objective|

I was not trying to be smart. But I don’t know about you, do you? 😉 You said I m quite funny? Thank you. I think the way you think is interesting. A kind of bizarre one.
When I said my analysis based on this website only? I learned about MJ more in visual. MJ’s gesture, mimic, and the words he expressed in various context. Including how his opinion on children, and how he ‘loved’ children a lot. Including his obsession to build Neverland, which present his symbolism of him self and the way he wanted to relate with children. Later, I found this website provides many facts that enriches my analysis.
This website is having its subjectivity, yes. But it also mentioning the facts first, later the author writes the analysis. I compared with fans site as well. So I could see which one is reliable and which one make everything seemed reliable. For me, by seeing many of photos of MJ with his ‘special friends’, it is the reliable one.

PS MJfacts: I m sorry I used the method you answer; in replying to Florence (copy paste and make the italic letters). Hope you permit that 😀

florence

You said like two times Debbie said that but never showed me a video of something. My mother said I was a gift from God and I’m pretty sure she’s my biological mother.
That ”fact”? A ”fact” is proved. You have 0 proof.
I did. MJfacts refused my comment and I’m not sure she/he will accept this but I can try at least. Also; Michael’s uncle did have vitiligo. So, yay..
”Bleaching” is a way to try to nNot ”look like a cow”. And… You have the medical rapport of Prince to say he didn’t have vitiligo. Your facts are really.. BS. You call everything you say a fact…

Pea

“So all abused people are pedophiles? I guess 1/2 of the mondial population is then.”

I didn’t intimate that, Florence. That’s a strawman; keep it in the realm of Jacko. But, as I said before, you’re one of those fans who needs for Jacko not to have been a victim of sex abuse because you know that many pedophiles and child abusers had been victims themselves. You know this so very well, and the implications of it given that Jacko has been accused 5 times already, that you must deny it.

And, finally, I’m not a “White American”; I’m black. However, what you seem to be suggesting is that one would not be traumatized by physical abuse if they were from a culture where corporal punishment is a norm. In the black American community, it is common, but Jacko was beaten, emotionally abused, and allegedly molested. It’s no surprise he was totally screwed up from the maltreatment: his face, his skin, his super-slim frame, his hanging around young boys and having them “sleep” with him in bed is prima facie evidence of a f–ked childhood.

You aren’t silly enough to believe Jacko didn’t have a “childhood” because he couldn’t go outside and play?! LOL.

CandyC

While this is off topic I’m curious to of your opinion, Pea. Speaking of Michaels “super-slim” frame, do you think he suffered from some sort of eating disorder, like anorexia? He’s mentioned before that when he thought of his father he felt sick and couldn’t eat for weeks and amount other things he’s said related to that, which does not sound like any other person I’ve ever heard of! But then he wasn’t like any other person.

I could also speculate he has body dismorphia or even possibly he was trying to obtain a boyish figure because he loved them so much? I think he had a lot of untreated mental health issues…

Pea

I have no idea if Jacko was “anorexic”, Candy! But I do believe that he had some kind of disordered eating; I don’t believe he wanted be fat. This reminds me of the information in Victor Gutierrez’s book, in which he was alleged to have drank Enfamil baby formula (yuck!) and use enemas for dieting (and other?) purposes. The baby-bottle sucking we know is confirmed by photographic evidence and a few anecdotes. From memory, I don’t recall if the alleged Enfamil consumption was used as a sort of meal replacement but I cannot imagine why else Jacko would drink the stuff… and I believe he drank it.

Then the use of enemas was confirmed by Janet Jackson (although Jacko’s secretary Orietta Murdoch believed he used them for anal stimulation, lol). She said they learned to use them for “health” purposes from Katherine Jackson.

There’s no doubt Jacko felt something was wrong with his physical appearance. I recall an article that speculated Jacko was a “homosexual autohebephile” — meaning he got sexual gratification imagining himself as a young boy while he was sexually involved with young boys.

Now, while I think the scientist’s conclusion is based upon a very, very surface understanding of Jacko and therefore not exactly “sound”, the idea is interesting. Many people saw Jacko as a “big kid” and kids definitely saw him as a peer. I am one of those Jacko researchers who believe that Michael Jackson wasn’t merely saying he was “Peter Pan” because he wanted to trick people into getting next to their sons; I think he may have seen himself, in those moments with boys, as one of them — he may have even justified the sex abuse in that way.

And if he felt like a boy, naturally, he’d try to look like one, at least in terms of size? That calls to my mind those mysterious semen-crunchy underwear they found with his soiled underwear back in 2003. All of the underwear found were size 30 — Jacko’s — and two were size 32 Jockeys. I don’t know which was the male’s underwear but since all were size small/small-medium and there is no real reliable evidence that he had anyone in his private quarters over the legal age of consent, it could be that those underwear belonged to a boy, in which case Jacko was as small as a boy. This would suggest to me that he may have wanted to stay as slim as them.

But, away from the speculation he could have been a “homosexual autohebephile”, his face and body are proof positive of a terribly traumatized individual. It’s bizarre that his fans believe he was some angel when his nose and skin proved he was clearly very messed up in the head. It’s almost a form of tenderness to Jacko to tell the truth as it was.

CandyC

The Enfamil was used, I believe, so that Michael could (paraphrase) “keep weight on, because when I think about my father I can’t eat” I recall I read that in MJWML. In addition, to another quote from him, taken from the Rabbi Shmuley Botech interview (which I found surprisingly open and more honest than usual): “I go through these serious food crises where I could go weeks without eating, I take stuff to keep weight on.”

He also goes on to describe his supposed commitment to vegetarianism, although I find that doubtful, the subject is confusing. But the point is I don’t think it’s unreasonable to conclude he took that stuff to keep weight on, perhaps a pointless discussion but some new points anyways!

silverspirit

Oh no, not the lame “MJ didn’t have a child hood” excuse! How come his brother’s didn’t turn out to be child molesters? MJ lied to his flock. They lapped it up. I’m still shocked to this day no one carted MJ away into the loony bin after he admitted to sleeping with boys twice on TV. Remember when he went on 60 minutes? The look on Ed Bradley’s face said it all “Are you crazy?” Don’t get me started about his drug use. It sickens me those kids were not taken way a whole lot sooner. All these people knew he was a hot mess and didn’t do anything to save those kids from neglect.

Pea

Silverspirit, Jacko needing to take responsibility for his actions and his not having a childhood are not mutually exclusive. The latter is not so much an “excuse” as it is something of an explanation — or part of one — about why he may have looked the way he looked and behaved the way he’d behaved. By the tamest accounts, Michael Jackson didn’t have a conventional childhood because he was a child star; by the worst accounts, he was a victim of child abuse.

We know the “lost childhood” nonsense he pushed for years as a justification for his bed-sharing and collection of special friends cannot be used as an actual excuse. Just as you said, his brothers were also overworked but they never became predators. This would suggest that there was something about Jacko (e.g., he was highly sensitive, compared to his brothers) that was unlike the other Jackson boys. It’s not hard to them imagine that there would be different outcomes in the way they all turned out. Similarly, being the most talented could’ve opened him up to especial trauma.

So again, I can believe he didn’t have conventional childhood. It’s not an excuse for his choices but likely, in my opinion….

silverspirit

I hear you. He was pushed more since he was the most talented. How about he was a psychopath who played that “lost childhood” to lure in little boys? I blame some of the people around them. Did you read Howard Stern’s book by any chance? I have to find the story Howard wrote about a meeting MJ & his manager. It really opened my eyes about Jacko. He was always plotting and scheming something to benefit him. No one else. I’ll post it when I find it.

ShawntayUStay

You mean this? The excerpt is on MJFacts if you haven’t seen it already.

“source? Which boys called him daddy and where is this info coming from?”

Both Wade Robson and Gavin Arvizo mentioned Jacko wanted them to call him “Daddy” — you should know this as a dedicated Jacko fan who spends her time on MJJC Forum. You should also know that whether a boy had a father or not, Jacko usually spent time with the boy and the boy’s mother separately.

April

I just wonder how much of these facts that you are stating are actually the ‘truth’. A true writer looks at both view points of the argument. Moreover, you seem to have overlooked the Jackson family now, if Omer was not accepted into the Jackson family how comes he is on holiday with them now?

Neely Bullington

That is the butterfly rash of lupus.

Neely

I agree…Michael does look very uncomfortable there. I’m not trained either, but, to me he has a look of guilt almost, or at the least fear of what Gavin might say. But, the allegations are such that there was no inappropriate contact up to that point, so that makes it hard to understand. The defense has pointed out that what the prosecution is trying to say is that this genius man waited until after the disastrous Bashir doc came out, under worldwide speculation, then he began abusing Gavin. Hmmm!

pluijm2

Perhaps it was just, as you point out, the fear of what Gavin might say. As soon as Gavin starts talking about him sleeping in the bed, Michael gets jumpy. He knows “if you love me….”is what he says to get children to do what he wants. Quickly he adds, I slept on the floor. He must have felt by then this was a touchy subject. He must also realize it would have people thinking. Because that’s another thing abusers use to make children compliant: if you love me you’d do this. If you love me you don’t tell. If you really love me you would let me do … to you.
Another reason why I believe he was shaken is when Bashir asks Michael what do you get outof this, he starts stuttering you see he has a hard time to come up with a believable answer. Finally he pulls himself together and gives Bashir the same old stuff he always comes up with: innocence, purity etc.
I find it hard to believe that nothing happened before the Bashir doc. I do believe he took his time grooming the boys so he could condition them. At first the boy was sick so nothing sexual happened probably. He knew Gavin for 2 years already this moment in time so……I mean this 12 year old boy is holding hands with him the way lovers do, fingers entwined. The 12 year olds I know don’t even do that with their fathers.

Neely

Yes, after I wrote that, I realized it very well could be for “training”. I am reading Jordy’s interview with the Doctor right now, and 2/3 finished. It is believable imho. However, what Gavin asserts to is nearly identical…..almost too perfectly identical. I’m wondering if the Arvizos were savvy enough to research the Chandler case before they made their claims. I have an opinion about Janet which likely doesn’t align with others though, so I can’t pretend there’s no bias in my view of her/them.

Pea

To be honest, that was my suspicion, too, about Gavin’s story — that it was “too similar” to Jordie’s Declaration, seen here: http://www.mjfacts.com/resources/chandler-declaration.pdf Specifically, it was the part of Gavin’s claims when he said that Jacko said he wanted to teach him how to masturbate and, “When you’re ready, I’ll show you.” That’s identical to what Jordie said, including the claims of masturbating within underwear.

One could argue that it was Jacko’s modus operandi to “teach” boys how to masturbate, hence why he had all of that heterosexual pornography (to get them horny).

However, if you look at the timeline that I mentioned in my other comment (http://www.mjfacts.com/how-child-molesters-operate/#comment-2486771181 ), in which the allegations came way after the initial letters fired off by Dickerman to Mark Geragos, Jacko’s attorney, the journey to Feldman, and Janet’s initial interviews with Dr. Stan Katz (Janet interviewed 2 weeks before both Gavin and Star), it isn’t hard to suspect that they could have researched the Chandler case at some point. I don’t doubt it and the multimillion dollar settlement was mentioned to them but likely not in great detail.

For the record, after the Bashir documentary aired in the U.S., the Smoking Gun website leaked Jordie’s declaration to the public, so it was available since early February 2003 for anyone with Internet access to view.

Neely

I think I even read that it was leaked the very next day, or maybe even the same day….I’m sorry, I just can’t remember, but it was like within a 24 hour period right?

Pea

Yes, I think it was leaked within 24 hours. Which, to be honest, is kind of sad, seeing that Jacko thought the documentary was going to be good for him. :/

But he did it to himself by sleeping in bed with kids.

Kat

Pea, where is the information about Janet being interviewed by Dr. Katz? Because I don’t believe it ever happened. Stan Katz conducted several interviews with the Arvizo children before contacting the law enforcement; I don’t recall ever reading or hearing anything about him speaking with Janet too. Why would a child psychologist interview her? This is all very curious.

Pea

Kat, that information was in Stan Katz’s testimony (which was conspicuously truncated, probably because of his previous comments about Jacko not being a pedophile) and in the transcript of his phone conversation with Det. Paul Zelis. He stated that he interviewed Janet on May 15th and 16th and Davellin, Star, and Gavin were interviewed on May 29th, approximately two weeks later. Then there was the meeting between Katz, the lawyers, and Jo Kaplan (Feldman’s wife) on June 5th, I believe. A final interview of the boys — I can’t recall if Janet was interviewed, too, that day — was on June 11th.

So, as you can see, theoretically — and I’m not saying this happened — there was ample time between Janet’s interview and the kids’ for a story to be concocted about molestation and the Chandler case to be looked up.

I’m assuming Feldman used Katz for Janet because, as he said at the grand jury, he just wanted someone to vet the accusers before he spent time and resources — and Katz was just available. As we know, he ended up terminating his representation and allegedly saying Janet was a “wacko” and “in it for the money”. We don’t know what was said between the players that made him make that decision, but he ended up passing it off to Sneddon.

Kat

OK, I suppose he did interview Janet, I must have missed that part, thanks. Can the phone conversation be read on the Smoking Gun website? Because I’d like to go through everything that pertains to that case to make up my mind. Some of the court transcripts are baffling; there’s a lot of ‘show in the courtroom’ going on, like everyone’s trying to present their side as the truth, and in the end everything ends up being more confusing. :/

I read Feldman’s testimony and he still believed Gavin, while not representing them anymore, because they didn’t want a civil lawsuit, it had come to a criminal trial. He also denied ever having said those things about Janet and was surprised when Mesereau asked him that. I’m not sure how Larry Feldman could have said that Janet only wanted money since he was the one who first suspected that Gavin had been molested! However, I shall read everything once again. I want to learn what really happened.

Feldman may have denied that he said she was “Wacko” and “in it for the money”, but I don’t believe someone like Larry King, a veteran, respected journalist, would fabricate comments that never were made. I think Feldman would be the liar — for lack of a better term — in that situation. I believe he said that.

One of the tricky parts is trying to figure out when the molestation allegations emerged. En route to Feldman? That could explain why they headed to him. While with Feldman? That could indicate where they got the idea from. En route to Katz? They added on to their harassment allegations by adding molestation and there was 2 weeks between Janet and the boys to get the story and acting right. (All just possibilities.) I believe Feldman mainly sent them to Katz because a kid was a part of the family, and he wanted someone to determine if they were credible in general. He claims that he got a feeling because of “very vague” comments… I’m not sure about that but I’ll take his word for now.

My suspicion is that he terminated his representation because he didn’t believe them, but came back doing pro bono work (e.g. filing the complaint against DCFS and helping some members of the Arvizo family with small legal matters) because he was hoping to be asked to be involved in a filing against the media corporations, which could’ve netted millions.

That’s just my opinion, of course. 🙂

Kat

Hi Pea. I apologize for the very late response. I read the phone transcript and found it to be fascinating, because I did want to know what Stan Katz personally thought about the Arvizo allegations. During his testimony in court he was reluctant to express personal opinions. I learned that he believed them and found them credible! He didn’t think Gavin and Star were exaggerating anything. He said that he didn’t get the impression that they were doing this for money, in fact in the middle of conversation he sort of implied that they had little understanding of the money that could be made with a lawsuit, since they were young teens and didn’t know about these things very well. Katz said that Janet was problematic, but in a battered and self-consciouss woman kind of way, not in the way that she would be lying for money. He said their story was bizarre, but the alcohol and touching and inapproriate behaviour seemed entirely credible.
Dr. Katz’s opinion is important for me, because he’s an expert in the field… I’ve been trying to see the case from a doubter’s perspective, but I don’t see much of a possibility that the Arvizos made it all up for money, especially considering the scrutiny and humiliation, and having their dirty laudry aired in court – all that they had to go through in the trial. However, I will continue researching the case with an open mind, because I do want to know the truth.

Andreas

I’ll second Kat’s notion. I’m researching the case as well, and I’m honestly trying to see things from both sides too, trying to doubt my own hunch, but really, the more I learn about the case the more clear it seems to me that the Arvizos most likely were telling the truth.

Gavin’s story seems highly plausible to me, and the motive of them doing it all for money to me is quite weak, messy, lacking, and seems more based on hearsay and “clever” narrative by the defense. I personally don’t think Meserau and Sanger even bothered trying to even make a alternative complete story of what “really happened”, it was just a million dollar paid job to punch holes in the accusers story, as all they aimed at seemed to be to acquit Jackson for ‘reasonable doubt’. A job they succeeded doing.

Not only did Dr. Katz find Gavin believable, but so did detectives Steve Robel and Paul Zelis who talked to Gavin, and so did Jeff Kaplakis who re-opened the case. They all testified in Gavin’s favor. Basically everybody that had anything to do with the case up to the trial did. Davellin also testified that Gavin, much like Jordy ten years earlier, had changed personality, and had become more distanced and silent, a bit more edgy, and just not as close to the family. Very similar to what June described what happened with Jordy.

I suppose the most bizarre part of the story is the timing Jackson allegedly had chosen to molest Gavin… but this is Michael Jackson, we have to remember, so normally I would say no further explanation needed? 🙂 Nothing about that man was normal! Staff of Neverland Jesus Salas and Chris Carter admitted seeing Gavin and Star drunk, Dr. Antonio Cantu testified finding the boys fingerprints on pornmagazines in Jackson’s room, so the minor counts about porn and alcohol seems to match their story. After the Bashir documentary the crisis among the staff at Neverland was rated by Ann Gabriel, who was hired to deal with the Bashir documentary crisis, from a scale from 1 to 10.. said “25”, so its a safe bet Jackson also was in panic, and supposedly drugged to his gills with demerol for that period. Not in his most rational state. That he got Gavin drunk and masturbated him in this apocalyptic timeframe(for him) seems very likely, and is probably what happened, in my humble opinion.

Acquaintance molesters also have a pattern of not being able to control themselves, so if Jackson did this to Gavin he would not be the first to choose an untimely and insane situation to do his move. I also have no problems understanding why the Jackson camp would go into full damage control and try to control the Arvizo family from going to the media, or to simply get them away from everything that could damage the trademark image of Jackson. Janet Arvizo was a loose canon, unpredictable and they knew it, and none of the staff knew what happened to Gavin, so his words could be dangerous too. Some of these staff probably knew Jackson wasn’t clean.

Frank Tyson was also supposedly paid 1 million dollar for his work, so that he was dedicated in his task to quiet them makes sense. He called Janet every 15 minute to get them back to Neverland. Surveillance cameras confirmed there were people following Janet Arvizo in Neverland, and there’s also tapes of her being hysterical. In totality its a story that makes sense to me, and it still makes sense even if Gavin’s mother was a welfare fraud and other pesky naunces.

I’ll respect everyone’s opinion though. Its a complex case. It was like 145 witnesses or something like that, so simply getting an superficial overview isn’t easy. I admit I’m still learning new things about the case all the time too. I am as Kat interested in the truth, not to defend the Arvizos at all cost. Its just what makes the most sense to me personally at present.

Neely

One of the things I question that separates this case from Chandler, Wade, Jimmy is Gavin doesn’t mention being grilled (as I can remember) and trained by Jackson to keep it quiet, that it was an expression of love between them, etc. Its been some time since I read Gavin’s testimony, so I could be mistaken, but I don’t recall him mentioning being coached by Jackson. That would kind of destroy some theories that coaching about secrecy is absolutely Jacksons M.O., as the other victims have claimed.

Andreas

I think I lean towards the theory that Gavin wasn’t as molestable as some of Jackson’s other victims, but he still was inside a special friend-ish zone, which had been on and off for years. Jackson had other boys lke that, so its not that off. Perhaps he wanted to groom them in hope of getting somewhere, but it showed to be difficult.

Gavin was a little bit more sassy, and toughheaded perhaps. Still, there was very strange creepy loving letters sent between Jackson and Gavin, and Gavin also refering to him as “daddy”, and so on. Just the cameraevidence that he leaned on Jacksons shoulder in the Bashir documentary should imply some kind of intimacy, closeness and possible grooming, shouldn’t it? Teenage boys usually don’t do that to 40 year old men they aren’t related to, do they?

Gavin’s story isn’t like Wade or James or Jordy in the sense that there was a sober groomed sexual relationship that developed over months or years. It all happened in the tension of the aftermath of Bashirs documentary, while the Arvizos were allegedly kept at Neverland, and Jackson was panicking and on painkillers. Gavin testified that he was drunk out of his mind on “jesus juice”(wine) every time Jackson molested him, so Gavin wasn’t even sure how many times it happened, as some of the times were really blurry to him, but two of them he was quite certain of.

Jacksons preaching about it being “natural” and “nothing to be ashamed of” because Gavin felt bad/guilty about it, does remind me a lot of Jackson and his classic pedo-logic, and it also sounds too odd and awkward for a 13 year old boy to really invent. Its true he never drilled Gavin to be quiet about it, but perhaps Jackson’s hope was that Gavin would be too drunk to remember as he was barely passed out most of the times. Either way Jackson and his team being obsessed with keeping the Arvizos quiet later(the “conspiracy claim”) could also be a way of reacting to keeping him quiet. Makes sense to me, at least.

Anyway, I’m not sure if I want to get into a huge argument over this, so forgive me if I don’t participate anymore. I just wanted to voice my opinion since Kat had a very similiar post to my thoughts.

ShawntayUStay

Well regarding the letters, they were more peculiar coming from Star and Gavin’s end rather than MJ, esp since a bulk of them were written when they had zero contact with MJ. These letters seemed overly effusive, and yet star claimed that he just copied them from a mass market produced card. I don’t believe that’s true, given how poorly worded and specific they were, but for argument’s sake, if they were indeed copied — platitude after platitude — that doesn’t make them (the family) look any better, rather it makes them look like trying to catch a fish on a lure by using false niceties.

The same, frankly bizarre, letters were written to Louise Palanker — who was a present part of their lives. So one wonders why they would then send the same type of letters to someone who hadn’t had any contact with them in months.

Also, as an FYI, Gavin said in the grand jury and in court in 2005 that the whole Bashir bit was an agreement between he and MJ for him to practice his acting skills and pretend like MJ was his savior/father figure. So it wasn’t real intimacy according to Gavin and couldn’t, therefore, be the result of grooming. True esp since he hadn’t seen MJ since the family’s trips to Neverland in 2000.

Neely

Certainly I respect your opinion, and everyone’s here. This site hasn’t felt like a place where people come to bash each other, but moreover have a healthy respect for others views. I too was just sharing my opinion about that specific point. Please…….carry on, carry on. 🙂

Kat

It seems entirely possible to me that Jackson would and in fact did molest a kid after everyone was suspecting him of doing that. It sounds crazy in theory, but there’s nothing in me that goes – that’s completely impossible, MJ wouldn’t do that, nor would anyone else… Like you said many preferential molesters can’t control their behaviour very well, especially with drugs and alcohol in their system. Any person has difficulties behaving rationally when they’re drunk and on all sorts of drugs. And also, there’s the possibility that he specifically chose that time to molest Gavin, knowing that he wouldn’t be believed if he ever told.

I’m not interested in defending Arvizos either, I know that many people doubt them, not without a reason I suppose, but my personal conclusion is that they didn’t lie at the Jackson case.

Pea

The question isn’t whether it’s possible; it’s whether it’s probable. And, as far as believability curves go, the notion of Jacko supposedly molesting the kid everyone had accused him of molesting, an accusation that had sent his camp into damage control overdrive following the Bashir doc, and the family’s numerous pointless fabrications represent quite the steep slope up which to trek. That’s just the truth. And this…

“there’s the possibility that he specifically chose that time to molest Gavin, knowing that he wouldn’t be believed if he ever told.”

…seems even more far-fetched. Wasn’t that something the prosecution posited? According to a bit of an interview of Gavin read by Mesereau, Sneddon asked him about the rebuttal tape and said something to the effect that Jackson had molested him prior to its recording but wanted to get Gavin on tape praising him, to which Gavin agreed that that was what happened. We know that is not what happened — that there was no molestation prior to that tape, as per the family. I’m not sure why Gavin lied there (well, I do have an inkling) but that seems like Sneddon’s unwillingness to accept that the Arvizos’ timeline following the discovery of that tape had shrunk to the point that the original prosecution theory was needing a “revamp”.

Also, it’s true that Jacko was a drug addict. However, his drugs of choice were opioids and benzodiazepines that zonk the consumer out of their mind. Combining alcohol with Demerol, would Jacko have been able to even get it up or think to get it up? Paris and Prince Jackson once called Grace because Jacko was so zonked out on morphine and the pills he swallowed by the fistful that they thought he was dead. I’m not suggesting it’s impossible that Jacko couldn’t have sex and he may have even taken a respite. After the Arvizos left, he tried to get into Aaron Carter’s bed, snuggled up with Juju Elatab, and had a party with boys at the Las Vegas Mirage Hotel. But if we’re going to talk about Jacko being high as one reason to believe a story wrought with so many pointless lies, I’d be interested in knowing if sex was even possible.

ShawntayUStay

I’m not interested in defending Arvizos either, I know that many people doubt them, not without a reason I suppose, but my personal conclusion is that they didn’t lie at the Jackson case.

Although under normal circumstances, one who believes a verdict is incorrect would in fact need to defend that position but considering most so called “MJ realists” believe them (the Arvizos) regardless, I doubt it would be necessary. You’re in the majority.

It’s a much harder position to have within the MJ critic community to believe Michael Jackson was a pedophile but he may in fact have been innocent of the 2005 allegations. That may even be considered an unpardonable sin to even consider an alleged victim is not telling the truth.

Andreas

It’s a much harder position to have within the MJ critic community to believe Michael Jackson was a pedophile but he may in fact have been innocent of the 2005 allegations.

Probably true, you might be in minority, although you are three people on here now, with Neely, so your army is slowly growing! On the other side, I haven’t really seen many articles or books staunchly defending the Arvizos either. At best sources take a wack at both sides, or they seem to team with Jackson. There’s little written about them here on Mjfacts, they had no uncle named Ray to came out and give their versions of things, dispell widely spread myths, etc. After the case they simply went underground, no comments. Just to understand their claims is like doing archeology sometimes. Diane Dimond’s book would probably is the closest to defending them, but even her book is quite neutrally written, although you get the impression she leans on believing them. (Although even she says Janet is a bad mother..)

I don’t think its a bad idea to propose Jackson might have been innocent in 2005 though, and I suppose its also somewhat noble to not just declare Jackson guilty because of prior sins, just by default. As an idea I find it very interesting, even if I disagree with it. Initially when I heard it I thought it could be a possible answer why there’s a confusion about MJ being innocent or guilty(because there definitely is a lot of non-fans who leans on him being innocent). If a family falsely accused a serial child molester, and he was acquitted, that could explain the confusion. It could entangle some of the mess, if it was true. (So even if you are wrong you show original thinking.)

Still, when i look at the fuller picture, its not a satifisying answer. It really leaves more questions than it really answers, so it would be the complete opposite of occams razor if its correct. For example: Is it improbable that Jackson would molest someone he was accused of molesting them, but still somehow probable that he would get them drunk and show them porn? What sense does that make? Certainly doesn’t sound like a man taking a responsible position!). Everybody involved denies there was ever plans of suing Jackson in a civil lawsuit. I can’t find any believable trace. It was always the missing link for Mesereau to prove, and he promised he would prove this at the beginning of the case, and to even hold it against him if he didn’t prove it. He failed majorly. In reality Gavin had to be dragged along by the police officers. He wasn’t eager at all, but was talked into it, being assured constantly he did the right thing. (Gavin changed schools because everybody called him a “faggot”, after all, so no wonder he was skeptical about telling the whole fricking world about it! His life would never be normal again) But even if there was money involved, lets say there was a link somewhere, does that really disprove their accusations? James and Wade is also suing for money, and the Chandler case also ended in money. Dr. Katz made an important point. He had never heard of ANY examples of anyone falsely accusing someone of child molestations for the sake of money. It just doesn’t happen. You’d really have to push yourself to believe the Arvizos is a unique exception, as the odds are diminishingly low. I also find it curious why MJ had ‘back problems’ and called in sick on the exact day of Gavins testimony, the very day he was going to talk about the molestation, showing up in pajamas 40 minutes late because he’d be thrown in jail otherwise. In my opinion he wanted to avoid hearing it, probably because he couldn’t face it.

ShawntayUStay

It is a testament to the quality of the witnesses, evidence presented, and the “evidence presenters” at the 2005 trial that would make a person like Neely who has said she had absolutely no interest in Michael Jackson — in either direction — come to a similar conclusion (or feeling, at least) as the jury did just by reading the transcripts, do you think? But I’ll let her speak for herself! 😉 In the totality of my time involved in the MJ community (5 years and counting…lol), I’ve only come across 2 others who didn’t believe the Arvizos but thought that MJ was a pedo who molested his special friends. Everyone else believed them, or at the very least, were inclined to believe them. I’ve only recently moved from “probably did it” to “probably didn’t do it”.

At best sources take a wack at both sides, or they seem to team with Jackson….Diane Dimond’s book would probably is the closest to defending them, but even her book is quite neutrally written, although you get the impression she leans on believing them. (Although even she says Janet is a bad mother..)

Have you ever considered the neutrality you sense is because the case may not be convincing to the journalists covering it? I mean that is a possibility (and the likely explanation for those more critical of MJ). As you even mentioned, Diane Dimond; I was shocked at how neutral she was, lol! Also Maureen Orth. with exception of her exquisite first piece “Nightmare in Neverland”, she is very “biased” against MJ because she says that she interviewed many people and cannot fathom him innocent (I agree). Her 4th piece “Neverland’s Lost Boys” was full on “conviction in the court of public opinion”; MJ was (likely) guilty of the Arvizo claims because he had a history of suspicious behavior and the 1993 claims for which he paid millions. But her last piece “CSI Neverland” was filled to the brim with cognitive dissonance. She sat in the court room for the entire trial and could not help feeling the same way many in the media (who’d also tried and convicted MJ) felt after seeing the boys and esp Janet Arvizo, according to J Randy Taraborrelli: duped and utterly disappointed. They (and she) felt that way because they had always believed MJ was a child molesting boy-lover but were denied a trial in 1994 that would prove it. They saw him in the Bashir doc defiantly admitting to continuing to share his bed with boys. So they saw the 2005 case as a chance to “right the wrong” for evading capture. But the Arvizos were seen as a flop; Janet was “nuts” and hard to believe. There were inconsistencies in a story that relies on each Arvizo being credible because they corroborate each other’s version of events. Of course, the media was still defiantly holding onto previous beliefs and still thought MJ would be convicted but I doubt they were really shocked at the outcome, deep down inside.

I don’t think its a bad idea to propose Jackson might have been innocent in 2005 though, and I suppose its also somewhat noble to not just declare Jackson guilty because of prior sins, just by default. As an idea I find it very interesting, even if I disagree with it.

You shouldn’t disagree with it! That’s how you remain objective! Preconceived notions (e.g. about race, class, gender, occupation or lack thereof, IQ etc etc) shouldn’t be used to fill in the holes of an accuser’s story. That’s how innocent people are falsely imprisoned.

Everybody involved denies there was ever plans of suing Jackson in a civil lawsuit. I can’t find any believable trace….But even if there was money involved, lets say there was a link somewhere, does that really disprove their accusations? James and Wade is also suing for money, and the Chandler case also ended in money. Dr. Katz made an important point. He had never heard of ANY examples of anyone falsely accusing someone of child molestations for the sake of money. It just doesn’t happen.

I completely agree, obviously, that seeking money isn’t a death knell to the believability of a claim. That’s sometimes the only way to get any justice. IMO, I don’t think the facts surrounding James, Wade, or Jordie’s allegations are similar to Gavin’s at all. But how can you say that there is no evidence of wanting to make a civil lawsuit? They went to Larry Feldman before ever going to the cops under their current civil attorney’s lead; “take the kids to the same guy that won big money for the Chandler boy” was Dickerman’s thought process. But for argument’s sake let’s say that Dickerman really meant it when he said he just saw Feldman as a “Jacko expert”. It would still suggest that he wanted help on how to navigate a civil suit involving MJ as a defendant because that would be Feldman’s only presumed expertise, right? And at the grand jury, Dr. Katz said that his involvement centered around helping to understand what had happened and “that there was a possibility that a lawsuit might be filed”. That’s pretty cut-and-dry, regardless of the denials given by Feldman and Dickerman. Katz was used to “vet” out the claims so Feldman didn’t have to waste time representing folks he didn’t believe. coupled with the fact that they sought a civil attorney first, prima facie, they wanted to do a civil lawsuit. I’ve yet to see any evidence to the contrary besides verbal denials. That doesn’t mean the claim is false, of course, but let’s call a spade a spade.

Katz’ opinion isn’t the totality of all opinions regarding false claims, a fact I hope even Katz would humbly acknowledge. So I wouldn’t say “it just doesn’t happen”, we don’t know for certain without trying to know for certain. It’s probably mostly true though, but how many of accusers have the same apparently litigious background and a history of claiming sexual abuse as Mama Arvizo? It’s a legitimate question to ponder.

Pajama day? Yes, I thought too that it was in indication of MJ not wanting to hear Gavin’s testimony (which was his second day of testimony, FYI) out of guilt. But what is an alternative and equally likely explanation? MJ was allegedly very sensitive and perhaps he couldn’t fathom listening to lies come out a child’s mouth, given what he did for them. That’s also possible.

Andreas

You shouldn’t disagree with it! That’s how you remain objective! Preconceived notions (e.g. about race, class, gender, occupation or lack thereof, IQ etc etc) shouldn’t be used to fill in the holes of an accuser’s story.

Right, but what preconceived notions are you implying myself, or others defending the Arvizos, have then? I don’t think I’ve ever defended them based on those categories you mention(class, gender, race, etc). I’ve explained why I believe them as good as I can, so I don’t think there’s any need to second guess my “real” motivations. Is it really so difficult to believe that I, just like you, are just looking at the facts around the case? And simply coming to another conclusion? Please be fair, dear Shawntay. None of us have any personal stake in this.

But how can you say that there is no evidence of wanting to make a civil lawsuit? They went to Larry Feldman before ever going to the cops under their current civil attorney’s lead; “take the kids to the same guy that won big money for the Chandler boy” was Dickerman’s thought process.

I’ll give you my take on it.
From reading the testimonies my impression is that the Arvizos were quite passive players in the whole process, and had little to no control over where they were sent. First off, coming back from their dreaded experience at Neverland, they were just trying to get back their visas, passes and their furniture back, as it was stored away by Jackson’s people. Their personal friend Jamie Masada tried to get them to trust his lawyer William Dickerman, as he had represented him in cases for the Laugh Factory. Dickerman eventually was hired, and quarreled with Mark Geragos, Jacksons lawyer to get their belongings back. He actually managed to get some of the furniture back, but still no visas or passports, and dealings were increasingly more and more unpleasant.

Meanwhile the Arvizos told him about being trapped at Neverland, and had been pestered by Jackson’s people at every hour. Dickerman was really a smaller fish in the lawyer world, and as things went along the Arvizos the case simply got too big for Dickerman. Way too big. How do you deal with someone like Michael Jackson and his million dollar legal departments?

So, no, The Arvizos didn’t go to Larry Feldman by themselves, they most likely didn’t know him. Dickerman did know Feldman though, and he was the one taking them to him. There’s nothing indicating Dickerman was after money either, as far as I can see. He just needed help dealing with Jackson’s lawyers, and Feldman was known as the guy who had successfully dealt with MJ earlier. Another misconception someone has is that Larry Feldman got really rich by the Chandler case, but in reality its widely known the case quite the contrary sent him in large debt, and he actually ended up in financial trouble for a while.

As for Larry Feldman, I’d recommend (re-)watching the Frozen In Time seminar he was included in 2009 on YT. There his whole speech is all about comparing the 93′ case and the 05′ case, and its quite interesting. He compares Gavin as looking a lot like Jordy, same age, and so on. He says the major difference in terms of legal matters was that in 93 the Los Angeles Police department kind of encouraged the civil suit to go first, to see how far they’d get, and what they could find out, while in 2005 the Santa Barbara police via Jeff Kaplakis insisted on taking over the case as soon as Gavin had been talking to them. So a civil case couldn’t be arranged. I even thinks laws had changed since then. Larry Feldman did believe Gavin was molested, and he did represent the Arvizos in tasks such as preventing Mesereau & co to subpoena Gavin and Jordy’s juvenile records, and Janet Arvizos parents economy, and other letter-ish stuff. Initially Gavin never disclosed he was molested before he was at Dr. Katz, as he was reluctant to tell.

So in my view the Arvizos weren’t even that active in the legal process that happened, if at all. They were brought by Jamie Masada to Bill Dickerman, who then brought the case along to Larry Feldman, Gavin was sent to Dr. Katz by Feldman, and Dr. Katz sent them to the police, Robel and Zelis, and the police brought on the criminal case. I can’t see any sign that neither Gavin, Janet or anyone else in the family had much control over where they were sent, and I don’t even see how they could have.

Why Janet never called the police about being trapped and harrassed by Jacksons people has however been a much discussed point. (Same goes with Louise Palanker, who also could have reported it, but didn’t.) I’m sure your perception would be very different, but I can believe that it would be daunting after someone like Michael Jackson with such claims of harrassment towards them. According to Ron Zonen, who represented Janet, she said she simply just didn’t feel like anyone would believe her. She had zero confidence, and its also plausible she knew she didn’t have the cleanest background, which didn’t help. Who would believe her? Her emotional state was also quite bad. The conspiracy claim is also a small claim. Janet also described Jacksons people as “killers”, so in her mind I’m sure she thought her life was in danger too, which also could explain why she didn’t call the police. I can definitely believe Jacksons people understood Janet could mean trouble, so I have no problem understanding they would target her, perhaps Frank Tyson thought he could pester her and scare her into silence, who knows. Things were evidently crazy over at Jacksons department at the time.

I wouldn’t say “it just doesn’t happen”, we don’t know for certain without trying to know for certain. It’s probably mostly true though, but how many of accusers have the same apparently litigious background and a history of claiming sexual abuse as Mama Arvizo? It’s a legitimate question to ponder.

Okay, but how do you reconcile thats its legitmate to use Janets prior history as proof against her, but you won’t do so with Michael Jackson prior cases? Jackson, someone you normally say was sexually obsessed with underage boys, and molested many of them? If you are going to judge case-by-case, why not give Janet the same courtesy as you do with Michael?

You also seem to cling on to every anecdotal evidence or even rumors against Janet, but you simply refuse that Jackson showing pornography to Gavin and Star had anything to do with grooming, like you probably would see as a given with other underage boys he had invited into his bedroom. Are you really saying that in this particular instance Jackson showing porn to Gavin was just a chummy buddy-thing, over a can of wine, between, um, a 13 year old boy and a 40+ year old (and other cases pedophile) man?

It might happen that sexual molestation claims has been used for money scheming, but lets face it, there’s just no widely known examples. I’m sure the fans would be all over it if there was. Its not for nothing that Tom Meserau started re-visiting the Jerry Sandusky case, claiming it had “problems”. He’s desperate, and needs something to compare MJs case to.

One thing that has always, always bothered me about the 2005 case, and it’s not very flattering towards the Arvizos. It’s this – why on earth would MJ want such a low class family around him in the first place? They were poor, they lacked graces, they were in many ways ungrateful, yet MJ invited them to Neverland many times and spent a lot of time hanging around with those boys. I don’t understand why MJ, a man of his supposed calibre, would do that. Couldn’t he make a better class of friend? It really puzzles me. Maybe I’m missing something.

Andreas

Yes, MJ even bought an expensive sport car for David Arivizo so they could come visit more frequently.

Now there may have been a sexual interest in Gavin from the get-go, who knows, but seeing how he was tremendously sick with a terminal cancer, and really looked like it too, I think Gavin at the time was more the exact type of thing MJ wanted to be known for. Helping unfortunate and sick kids. Being a big humanitarian and a protector of children. Gavin at the time was picture perfect for that type of thing. As we know, Jackson even took credit for Gavin surviving the cancer. “Modern medicine hasn’t figured out everything”, he said, implying the chemotherapy didn’t play that big of a role.

ShawntayUStay

If the Arvizos are so classless as the media, imo, erroneously claims, what does it say about Chris Tucker and George Lopez, who are also celebrities and spent, according to the Arvizos and themselves, a lot of time with the family? Should they, too, have chosen more “high brow” friends? So I don’t think that narrative really applies, that MJ must have had some ulterior motive if he was hanging with them (and I use the term “hanging” loosely).

I think it’s sad that they were prejudged as “Barrio trash” just because of their race and economic status. Despite the mother’s mental illness, the boys seem quite sophisticated and Gavin definitely has an arrogant streak as he even said he thought the teachers at his school were too beneath him for him to respect hence the behavioral problems at his middle school. These folks were sophisticated enough to elicit the charity of celebrity benefactors. That takes a lot more brain power than the media has allotted them.

MJ wasn’t a class act either despite his wealth or power. You see his room at Neverland, his home at Holmby Hills? He lived in filth. Not so high caliber, lol.

Neely

I did see his rooms, oh my!! Truly disgusting. I wonder what exactly the “maids” we’re doing when they were assigned to his private quarters. I suppose if you’ve had a maid since being in utero, you don’t ever have to pick up your own undies, or clear out the stacks and stacks of clutter piling up on the mannequin doing flips in the corner. 🙂

silverspirit

He was a disgusting pig. Irrc, didn’t Dr. Murray confirm that MJ did not allow any maids in his area to clean? Murray had to beg him one time to let someone clean up. Guess he refused if you see the mess he left behind when he died.

He would leave expensive hotel rooms mess as well. Didn’t he get sued for that at least once?

Neely

Haha, I don’t know about a lawsuit for leaving messes. But, I’m hardly a veteran in Jackson studies.

Dr. Murray did say that, but, he is also a man I feel like you have to sort of pick through his words and decide which ones are truthful. I hadn’t put much weight on his statement, since in the past there were maids who testified to being assigned to his private quarters. I suppose that could have changed over the years as he became more reclusive. It would be increasingly difficult to keep propofol and Xanax and Ativan and Valium under absolute secrecy given it was strewn everywhere in his bedroom. I had only been privy to the widely covered stories, and sometimes not even those over the years. I was shocked to learn he was an addict. I felt like he was somehow able to keep all that beneath the radar. Maybe I’ve just been under a rock. It does seem logical that keeping all that IV paraphernalia in his room, certainly he wouldn’t want maids meandering in and out.

Kat

I don’t think Jackson wanted them as friends. The man had no real friends as far as I know, he just used people around him to get what he wanted out of them. Sad, but true. Even Elizabeth Taylor was a bought friend who requiered jewellery from MJ to say nice things about him! I suppose the answer to that question depends on what designs he had on Gavin and the entire family. Maybe he wanted to be known for helping to heal Gavin’s illness and helping a poor family? Or he wanted to groom and molest him like many other boys who had wanted to meet him? Opinions vary, lol.

But I agree with the viewpoint that MJ didn’t have a lot of class himself. Money and fame hadn’t gotten him a lot of that. He was still a criminal, a liar, a user of people who were the closest to him. Not classy at all. :/

Neely

And don’t forget the nose. How a public figure of that magnitude could disfigure himself so tragically, is beyond my understanding. Although I admit I feel sympathy for a person who is so ashamed of their own face that they ultimately disfigure it. I wonder what he told himself, “never fear self, no one will ever notice your nose is a fraction of what it once was, and bonus……you don’t even have to wear makeup to record the ghost video”. Lol!!

I have wondered if the surgical masks were just an appliance to help him hide his face. In so many clips of him, he seems full out ashamed of his own face. Constantly holding his hand up in some form of way so as to cover his face, playing it off like he’s adjusting his glasses, or shielding the sun…..while indoors. The tragedy is he was a very handsome young man.

Sorry, I got off on a totally different subject. Just some observations.

ShawntayUStay

I was talking generally about preconceived notions, not specifically about you! Sorry if you got confused. I’m referring to the concept of using a bias (any bias, including but not limited to the ones I mentioned) to prejudge the guilt (or innocence) of a person, which can color the way later information is viewed. For example, if one thinks MJ was a pedo it can (qualifier is the operative word here) make them believe any accuser at least at first blush and subsequently they can look for reasons to validate their preformed opinion of guilt. That can and does happen, at least in America.

Again, not saying you or anyone else is currently doing that. But you did imply that you’d disagree with the notion of not prejudging MJ because he was a pedo? Or did I confuse what you meant by that statement?

ShawntayUStay

As for believing “anecdotal evidence” about Janet Arvizo hook, line, and sinker, I don’t do that. If it’s plausible I’ll believe it. Like I said before, all views of Janet’s personality — from both friends and foes — can be true. Depends on their experiences with her.

You, on the other hand, are essentially relitigating the verdict by repeating the exact same narrative proffered by the prosecution and the Arvizo family — the same narrative that failed to convict. That narrative does not explain the many pointless lies and inconsistencies the family said, but we are still supposed to believe the claim of molestation? You haven’t yet said anything that deviates from the story they wanted the jury to believe in 2005. I read the boys’ testimonies and wasn’t convinced, so repeating their story, their explanations, word for word doesn’t cut it for me. I’d be interested if you’ve uncovered any facts that were missed by the prosecution, or if you have any alternative analysis that I’ve missed that would make me understand the Arvizos’ story. 🙂

So the central question remains: why was he acquitted? Or rather, why should I (or anyone) believe he was guilty rather than not guilty?

Andreas

You put lots and lots of trust in the jury’s verdict. No… I don’t really follow anyone else’s narrative, its just my own conclusions by reading about the case. Its what makes sense to me, well, personally. That is all.

why should I (or anyone) believe he was guilty rather than not guilty?

Its not my job to convince anyone what to think about the 2005 case. I’m sure you’ll think whatever you will think, and I’m fine with that.

Neely

Jackson reportedly was physically ill and had to leave the courtroom (with his hand covering his mouth) I believe on one of the days Janet was to testify. Maybe her first day. I am inclined to believe that was because he was sickened by her presence, knowing she was about to lie her arse off, not because of his own guilt. It doesn’t seem probable that it was his own self loathing and guilt that caused him to be sick. More likely, from facing a woman who was about to chew him up and spit him out, with salacious stories that don’t really add up. If he was a “confident” abuser, which he had been in the past, so confident that he called Jimmy Safechuck, a prior victim, to defend him under oath, then what could make him physically ill at the sight of Janet Arvizo? He was confident he’d sealed his secrets with his other victims.

Things don’t exactly add up. If he was so apprehensive about Gavin testifying, so as to end up at the hospital, whether feigned or not, then why was he so confident so as to plead with a different victim to do exactly what he supposedly feared so much from Gavin? This does not make sense to me. The two ideas can’t live together in my mind.

Another dissimilarity between the allegations is, did any of the other victims claim they’d been plied with wine or some other form of alcohol? Given Gavin’s character as he himself states, as well as several other testimonies, I find it absolutely believable that he helped himself to the alcohol at Neverland. That could perhaps be because I myself raided my friends parents liquor cabinet at age 14. :-). But, that’s another story. Ha! I can’t really believe that this delinquent from East L.A., with suggested gang involvement, or at least knowledge of and exposure to it, is so innocent that he had no experience with sex, alcohol, or masturbation, prior to his exposure to Michael Jackson.

Andreas

Another dissimilarity between the allegations is, did any of the other victims claim they’d been plied with wine or some other form of alcohol?

Wade Robson also mentioned something along the lines of victims of “Jesus Juice”, didn’t he? Implying he was given it too. “Jesus Juice” a word Jackson gave for wine. Perhaps others can give better reports if he gave wine to other boys. Its a little bit weird to propose that Gavin and Star only helped themselves with the wine, or even the pornmagazines in Jacksons bedroom, but I suppose that must be the suggested alternative.

If the stories about Gavin and Star being a bit rude and out of control at Neverland seems appealing, you also have to consider the corroborating stories by many people that Jackson encouraged that sort of limitless behavior for children visiting the ranch. Neverland in his mind was supposed to be the place by design where “children could be children”, and no adult could say they couldn’t do this or that. He would even instruct staff to not tell kids they couldn’t do anything. For example, Macaulay Culkin was said to be utterly out of control when he was at Neverland. The maids said he was a nightmare because of all the mess he made, and that they had to clean up.

I do agree Gavin’s story is a little bit different perhaps, but the days post-Bashir documentary was also quite a different scenario. People did testify things were a bit crazy in Jacksons camp, and I hope that is at least believable. Many people testified to that in court. You know, even before Gavin reported what allegedly happened to him, Gloria Allred and Carol Lieberman had already reported the case to the police, based on the Bashir documentary alone. Dt. Terry Flaa investigated but closed the case. It was again reopened when Gavin came forward to the police. Things were not under control for Jackson.

The way I kind of picture those days at Neverland for Michael Jackson was that his secret with little boys were coming to an end. He must have felt the world was collapsing in on him, and the pressure must have been gigantic. I sort of wonder what went through his head when he was laying on his bed those nights. I sort of picture him on drugs, perhaps drunk and perhaps more than a little bit decadent, like he stopped caring. I think someone reported when after he saw the Bashir documentary he tried to eat he couldn’t even get his spoon to aim at his mouth. He was simply out of order. Why he would choose to molest Gavin, if he did, is a good question, but I never pictured it like it was a conscious decision by a clear mind, like he had done with other families, grooming them for months to get in bed with their sons, which must have been very conscious. I sort of picture it more like a decadent complusion, yes, even if it happened several nights in a row. Gavin’s story was that he was drunk out of his mind, so I can sort of picture MJ taking advantage of him. Perhaps it later was even a daze to Jackson. Perhaps he didn’t even remember it himself, and really thought he was innocent, that’s an interesting proposition.

Neely

Interesting thoughts you raise. I hadnt really tried to imagine the atmosphere at Neverland, where Jackson is out of control, sort of in a stupor. I naturally sort of thought he wasn’t even there that much.

With respect to not having rules at Neverland….I agree, it must have been a free for all for kids. I felt like he did try to keep the cellar somewhat under lock and key. I was surprised to learn that liquor was available, open and ready in the kitchen. Although, maybe he, like my friend’s parents, never thought the kids would get into it? I was a holy terror at Gavin’s age, therefore I think I can conceive of his lack of innocence based on my own little opportunist self. :-). Gavin certainly didn’t shy away from authoritative challenges I don’t think. With the exception of maybe his mother…..and she was checked out most the time it seems. Lack of boundaries and rules within the confines of Neverland doesn’t really get Gavin off the hook in my eyes. He didn’t have to wreck the golf carts and such, just because he could.

Neely

I had a sense that things were awry with Janet, and it was possible she had literally snowed everyone around her and bullied her husband, convincing him and her children to do her dirty work. She admits, as well as many other people, she was hardly around, rarely came out of the guest cottage, rarely seen at the hospital, and often didn’t even know where her kids were at Neverland. I felt like she thought being invisible would make her less of a target/suspect. It wasn’t until after I had the gut feelings, that I read Carol LaMeres (?) account and the other persons I linked on here, whose name I can’t even call right now, jeez. I felt like carol might have an agenda since she was later claimed to be a GF to David. But, then I read the other account, and felt pretty certain that Janet was likely the puppeteer at the head of the whole scheme, and a lifetime of them. I feel doubt that she was ever even abused by David and suspected such primarily by the time I’d reached the midway point of the transcripts. I don’t think I would generally tend to put much emphasis on these two accounts because anyone can lie, but they sort of cemented what I’d felt before even reading them.

I can’t say that any of Janet’s character flaws = Jacksons innocence in this case. (Well, not 100% anyway). I can’t say I believe she didn’t think she was slick enough to pull the whole thing off either. She plays the innocent dumb girl role fairly readily, along with the God fearing, bible thumping church goer too. In her overzealous portrayals of these characteristics, I became super suspicious. Particularly in light of the sort of gargantuan skeletons she had in her closet. After all, how could a dumb, God fearing, virtually invisible lady possibly mastermind welfare fraud, and a complicated scheme against JCP, of which I feel compelled to think that they said, “just pay the woman already”. 🙂

I felt like there actually was a grain of truth to her claims of being kept out of the public eye (kidnapped, lol). It’s very believable that the Jackson camp went into overdrive with respect to damage control. As I recall, they were running surveillance on her before the Bashir doc hit the public, which speaks to the notion that they too felt she was a suspicious character. I don’t disbelieve at all that they pulled out all the stops to contain her, the loose cannon that she appears to be.

Kat

I don’t believe anyone who makes an allegation. I don’t believe he sexually abused the fifteen year old kid in Canada who had never been near Neverland or Joseph Bartucci who claimed that he was raped in a car or something outrageous like that. I don’t think he molested Corey Feldman or Aaron Carter. I’m not decided about Emmanuel Lewis.

But when it comes to false allegations it seems more logical to me that people would doubt Wade Robson or James Safechuck who spent twenty years praising him and are now claiming he molested them and are asking for money. Gavin didn’t wait for twenty years and his family never made a civil lawsuit, and I think that gives him more believability. Of course it’s possible that a false allegation is made agaist a molester, but with the Arvizos they almost managed to put Jackson into jail, and when I think about it it seems to me that no one could possibly be than unlucky to be almost put behind bars the one time when they didn’t in fact commit the crime. And I don’t think Janet would try to do that to anyone or force her kid to lie about something as humiliating. She was a troubled woman, but she wasn’t evil or ready to do absolutely everything for money. I also don’t think Gavin and Star would agree to be so cruel to someone that had helped Gavin to get better and was ‘like a daddy’ to them. When you treat people well they respond by being good in return, not by making terrible allegations about you. If someone would have helped me to get better after an illness, naturally I would never make false claims of that sort about them.

ShawntayUStay

Do you remember from VG’s book that Emmanuel Lewis was mentioned in Evan’s chronology as a boy that MJ told Jordie who masturbated in front of him? Of course Manny denies anything like that but if Jordie is telling the truth, MJ was either making it up to impress him (i.e. a celebrity did it, why are you so shy?) or Manny is not being truthful.

I wouldn’t assume what Janet (or any other Arvizo) wouldn’t do just because you wouldn’t do it or couldn’t understand anyone doing it. Their life history is probably drastically different from yours. You also probably wouldn’t falsely accuse security guards of sexual assault either, but she did. That fact alone would make it fallacious to make generalizations about “typical behavior”, don’t you think? I know people who thought OJ Simpson was innocent of murdering Nicole just because they didn’t think anyone would murder their children’s mother. Of course that is silly considering stats say US women (especially white women) have the lowest murder rates and if killed, it’s usually by an intimate partner (especially if the intimate partner was domestically violent).

Kat

I know that people can do all sorts of bad things. But they have motives for them, and with the Arvizos in Michael Jackson case I have a hard time finding a motive, because the ‘they wanted money’ narrative for me doesn’t make a lot of sense and I haven’t seen a lot of proof of that being the case with them.

If we assume that Arvizos lied at that case and Gavin was never molested, then what they did is pretty much the most horrible thing I can imagine anyone doing. To ruin a person’s life and reputation and try to put them in prison for twenty years and accuse him of the most horrible crime possible is just the worst for me. It takes a lot to believe that anyone would do that, even people that lied previously on a much smaller scale.

Then, as we know the family didn’t succeed with putting him behind bars (or getting a lot of money from him, if we think of that as their ultimate motivation), but they further ruined his image. After the 2005 case many more people than before believed that he was a child molester. Ten years ago I was only marginally interested in MJ, but I kept thinking – if these accusations keep on coming, then there must be something to them. Now I ask myself if Jackson could have possibly be so unlucky to go through all that while being innocent? And I keep thinking that no, that isn’t likely at all. For me it seems much more possible that he was guilty and got what he deserved.

Neely

People do engage in horrible things to others. I think in Janet’s simple mind, she didn’t care about the fallout, she was interested in the notoriety and rubbing shoulders with a celeb, even if it was negative exposure. Mostly I think she was convinced they would win, and on to the civil suit which was pretty much a guaranteed win. She won the JCP case after all. If I can believe that Jackson deceived literally the whole planet, I can certainly believe she would be so heinous. She was maybe the most selfish person I hope to never cross paths with. I feel she always operated on some self serving agenda, at the cost of even her own kids. If she didn’t even visit her own son in the hospital, why would she give a damn about what she inflicted on Michael Jackson? Isn’t a mother’s love supposed to be the deepest and most sacred? I can’t imagine her NOT being at the hospital. To me that’s a worse offense than any charge she brought against Michael Jackson. Who leaves their own kid in a hospital bed dying? If that doesn’t describe her lack of conscience or heart, then nothing could.

Like you say, it’s much more likely that Jackson was guilty and got what he deserved. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire right? Do you feel that if he was innocent in the Arvizo case, that it means he was innocent in all the cases?

ShawntayUStay

If I can believe that Jackson deceived literally the whole planet, I can certainly believe she would be so heinous.

What an excellent point, so simple yet so profound. I hadn’t even thought of that! It’s seen as a given that MJ was capable of cruelly using and discarding people after taking what he wanted from them, but why couldn’t Janet Arvizo be capable of the exact same behavior? I’d argue that MJ was lucky that he was so famous because that seemed to be the only pull he had. How much of his charisma and charm was truly from his own personality and not his celebrity mystique? Jackson biographer J Randy Taraborrelli once quipped that if MJ was a celebrity he’d be the guy sleeping on his friend’s couch, LOL! Howard Stern and George Michael both said that MJ was rather aloof and unfriendly, and James Safechuck — in an article for his hometown newspaper written when he was doing the Pepsi commercial — said that MJ was really shy and didn’t talk very much. That seems to be the theme. He was allegedly quite strange but his celebrity made his awkwardness tolerable and even lauded as “unique” and “interesting”.

The prosecution stated that Janet was basically harmless (and thus capable of nothing with respect to MJ) because she was a mentally ill battered wife who had her first child at 16 and had little formal education. But I’d argue that she and the Arvizo family accomplished a lot more than one would predict given their putative status as “Barrio trash”. She had the kids involved in dance, acting, and comedy camps, and military/law enforcement type programs. They, without the help of wealth and/or social clout, befriended famous people and acquired more well off benefactors. She (and David) even had the wherewithal to sue JC Penney for alleged physical and sexual assault. So she isn’t a naive woman; what she lacks in education she made up for in street smarts, which is true for many minorities in similar economic positions.

She allegedly hated the idea of herself becoming a bored fat housewife, so I always believed that she took the necessary steps to make sure she could live the life she wanted through the molding and sculpting of her kids. Who besides Janet and perhaps David taught the kids to write those effusive letters, or make effusive phone calls to the people they wanted something from? Didn’t someone say that she put them in acting classes so she could get them to do what she wanted? Also, maybe it’s just me but I found it strange the way Gavin so readily referred to his mother’s new beau-cum-husband as dad? And so quickly? Makes me think that the boys, at least, are very much Janet’s “babies”; alternately, if Carol Lamir and Angel Vivanco are to be believed, Davellin was not at all.

If she didn’t even visit her own son in the hospital, why would she give a damn about what she inflicted on Michael Jackson?

Another excellent point, Neely. I felt sorry for Gavin when he said he was alone on New Year’s Even in the hospital, with no family, so he called up Chris Tucker who brought his own family to spend time there with Gavin. One wonders what the family dynamic was in order for a little boy with cancer to spend a holiday alone in a hospital bed. The prosecution claims that despite this mother’s love for her sons, she was cruelly separated from them and kept away while MJ had his wicked way with Gavin, and to a lesser extent, Star. But if this same mother could find seemingly flimsy excuses to not go the hospital, and leave him alone on New Year’s, why would she be concerned about her children at Neverland? She wasn’t, despite her claims of threats and intimidation. She returned again and again.

And if she could risk her children’s safety, why would she be concerned with potentially putting MJ behind bars with what seems to be a tall tale, given the inconsistencies and pointless lies? She did it to the security guards at JC Penney when she added the sexual assault a few years after the original complaint. I couldn’t imagine falsely accusing someone of some crime but she apparently didn’t have the same scruples. So anything with her is possible, I’d say.

Do you feel that if he was innocent in the Arvizo case, that it means he was innocent in all the cases?

That’s what fans say about the Jordie Chandler case, which is why they put in so much effort to discredit his claims. They say that if they can prove that Jordie lied, it would mean that MJ was never a pedophile with a love for young boys, and all subsequent allegations are simply ridding on the coattails of Jordie’s story because the hope that they would also get a large payout. It’s a logical idea but it ignores the fact that Jordie was not the first special friend MJ had. MJ was pursuing young boys as friends well before (and after) Jordie — two of his special friends before Jordie, Wade Robson and Brett Barnes, were the ones who let the world know MJ’s habit of one-on-one man-boy sleepovers! Also, James Safechuck was a special friend from 1987 to 1992, and his allegations of abuse are entirely more substantive than Jordie’s since Jordie was only with MJ for 3 to 4 months. So the issue of MJ’s alleged pedophilia predates Chandler. MJ’s innocence with respect to the Arvizo case doesn’t change the fact of his other special friends, esp considering that Gavin wasn’t even close to being a special friend or having that type of relationship with MJ so there’s no similarity to the others, IMO.

Neely

How to go about getting Michael Jackson off your front porch??

Pay him for the pizza! 🙂

Kat

That’s possible if one assumes the worst about Janet, and about the entire Arvizo family, which I don’t. I don’t think she was the kind of person who would do that for money or force her son with everything he’s been through to also lie about being sexually abused. Especially with many people testifying positively about her character, even Asja Prior who testified for the defense, but still said Janet wasn’t materialistic and was a good mother to her kids. But anyway, I know we won’t agree about Janet and I don’t want to argue with the other side that thinks differently than I do.

I don’t believe every allegation that has been leveled against Jackson. Victor Gutierrez infamously said that there was a video tape recording of MJ molesting his nephew. I struggle to believe it’s true, because I don’t think he would go after someone in his family or leave video evidence of his deeds – that just seems so out of the character for me. But I do believe he molested Jordan, Jason, Gavin, Wade, and James; based on the evidence that I’ve seen and read.

Neely

Thanks for responding Kat. Just want to make a point that I don’t feel like this is an argument. I did come here to gather the factual information, (transcripts, etc) and have become very interested in the opinions of others here along the way. In the US, A person is innocent until proven guilty. I came here to allow facts and expert opinions to prove to me that the court was wrong, as well as the fan community. So, any discussion I am involved in I can’t really call an argument. I’m interested in what you have to say. I don’t believe the Arvizos at this point, but, I’m not interested in convincing you, I’m very interested in you convincing me however.

I don’t blame any of the Arvizo kids. Gavin especially was a victim no matter how you look at it. If he was being truthful, then he’s a victim to child molestation. If he lied, he’s a victim of his own mother’s power over him, and what I would call abuse, neglect, and brainwashing, to which he had no choice but to succumb. Either way, he was a victim. You can hardly blame a kid for his surroundings and upbringing. It’s the guardians who orchestrate that.

Janet, no doubt, wreaked a lot of havoc on these security people whom she claimed sexually assaulted her at JCP. I feel that was their livelihood as well, no less so than Michael Jacksons reliance on his livelihood which was tarnished of course. She likely put some big red flags on the reputations of these JCP people too. Without conscience. I don’t pretend to believe they are less important than Michael Jackson. They aren’t. If she can do it to them, why is MJ any different in her eyes? I believe she saw an opportunity, and took it. Do you think she was being honest in the JCP case?

Andreas

If she can do it to them, why is MJ any different in her eyes? I believe she saw an opportunity, and took it.

I have no real personal opinion yet what really happened between her and the guards at JCP, I haven’t studied it beyond hearing others reporting of it, but for the sake of argument lets say its true she accused them falsely for sexually harrassing her, and therefore its “likely” she did that to Michael too through Gavin. How is that argument any different from saying Michael Jackson did molest several young boys he knew, and therefore “likely” did it in this case as well? Isn’t that the exact same type of argument?

Wouldn’t it therefore make more sense to focus on the present case? There was a lot of claims made by the Arvizos and the presecution and lots of evidence put forward. Wouldn’t that be more rational to judge the actual case from than an unrelated entirely different case?

Neely

Yes, it is the same type of argument. I’m not sure I understand the question though. Are you saying if we isolate Janet to the case against MJ, we must also isolate MJ to the same case? In other words, we must hold them both to the same standards in terms of character with/without consideration of their history?

If that’s indeed the question, I can isolate Janet to this specific case, and still feel she was the mastermind of her husband and children. People sort of naturally believe that a mother isn’t capable of the things I am suggesting. The coveted mother’s love. My life’s experiences speak loudly to the possibility that a mother’s love sometimes isn’t what it ‘appears’, that the actions speak far louder than words, that we don’t know what goes on behind closed doors, and that appearance is EVERYthing to such a mother. In fact, they present two completely different people……the secret mother, and the one the outside world sees. I don’t buy into the notion that a man can’t possibly be abused by his wife. Janet had that to her advantage. All a woman has to really do is claim abuse, and the husband has lost his rights. Testimony after testimony says that it was David who was spending night after night with Gavin in the hospital, yet he was made out to be a real bastard in the courtroom. Again, I have to look at the actions rather than the words.

I think Kat mentioned Asja Prior stated Janet was not materialistic. If you are to keep up the facade, of course you can’t appear materialistic. And, she was basically, aside from her settlement, bathed in poverty. It’s hard to be materialistic if you have nothing to work with.

With respect to holding Michael Jackson to the same standards of prior acts, or proof of character……I can hold him responsible by virtue of prior acts. I am reluctant however. I have to believe all the prior acts in order to hold him to those same standards. I feel that the most believable is Jordan Chandler. Thereafter, I feel it could have been that Jordan opened the flood gates, and laid the foundation for other accusers. The details of other accusers could be viewed as proof of guilt, OR proof of innocence imho. If the details are similar, it suggests a pattern of M.O. Similarities in details can also be viewed as someone doing their research, and merely copying the allegations, inserting a few unrelated details to make it seem more authentic. I sincerely have not developed a conclusion about any of them, with the exception of Jordan, whom I feel is difficult to disbelieve.

Andreas

There’s two very different versions who was the crook/schemer and the saint of David Arvizo and Janet Arvizo in their alleged crimes. To me it seems very difficult to know. The defense had to paint the Arvizos as horrible as possible to get Jackson off, so they needed to blame Janet, true or not, and the persecution had to do the opposite to make Janet seem as clean as possible, so there could be their motivation to blame David Arvizo for absolutely everything. So it all sort of depends who you choose to believe.

To me David Arvizo did seem like the grand schemer, from what I’ve read, for the most part, but I’ll admit I’m probably a bit biased at this point, and I haven’t read everything.

For better or worse, I’ve been trying not to avoid focusing as much on Janet. My impression always was that the molestation claim was Gavin’s accusation, not his mother. When Ron Zonen said the police had to tell Janet about it, and she was shocked, and had no idea, I believed it. I suppose you must propose that it was all an act to the police then? Well, for whatever its worth people like Louise Palanker corraborated that Janet had no clue Gavin was molested, although she was puzzled by Gavin’s strange behavior. If she planned it, why didn’t she just say she saw it too? Why didn’t she instruct Davellin to say she saw anything?

(Ok, on second thought, I suppose Janet did say she saw Jackson lick Gavin’s head on a plane once, a story Bob Jones also said he saw with Jordy.)

My focus on the 2005 case has mainly been what really was the conspiracy story, what was their overall claim piece-by-piece, what did Gavin actually say happened, who did they meet after Neverland up to the trial, and does these things check out in their favor? There’s a lot to this case, but my answer so far is yes. Its a bit of a bizarre story perhaps, but it seems to check out.

There’s at least a lot of people who worked for Jackson who would testify that the Arvizos really were kept at Neverland, and were ordered not to leave. It makes sense too, because of the Bashir documentary. Even if Jackson didn’t molest Gavin it was in their interest to control everything that came out from the family. Michael Jackson was not just a person, he was a trademark and a huge brand with lots of people working for him.

As Kat has said, and I think I’ve said it earlier as well, if this was all a rehearsed and planned scheme to take down Michael Jackson I don’t get why everything the Arvizos did was so vague and clumsy. Of course, being vague and clumsy is not a good thing, but it does crash with the story being planned and rehearsed. When Gavin and Star testified it really seemed like they were trying to remember what happened.

Why didn’t Gavin want to say what happened to him to Stan Katz? Even the police had to actually drag his story out of him, and convince him to come forward about it. It doesn’t sound like a rehearsed 13 year old boy under strict training by his mother what to say, does it?

Pea

“How is that argument any different from saying Michael Jackson did molest several young boys he knew, and therefore “likely” did it in this case as well? Isn’t that the exact same type of argument?”

But this has been a dominant part of your argument already, has it not? If I’m wrong, please correct me, but you’ve included it in some form in nearly every comment you’ve written during this dialogue….

At any rate, the histories of both sides are relevant, which is why the histories of both sides were made issues of at trial. Past behavior is a good predictor of future behavior, says the maxim. However, as far as having a retrospective discussion of the case goes that may involve challenging a unanimous acquittal, I would argue that the histories of either side must be dealt with in different ways.

For instance, the Prosecution’s 1108 production totally bombed, and Ray Hultman (before he went nuts and started blaming people for his conscious “Not Guilty” verdict) stated that while Jacko’s past behavior with boys demonstrated that he was likely a molester, it had no bearing on what he did in the Arvizo case. I believe that is fiercely reasoned. But being well-versed in Jacko, one cannot totally ignore Jacko’s penchant for boys. So in maintaining Hultman’s rational assessment of the case, I ask myself a modified question rooted in Jacko’s acknowledged pedophilia: “Does this case fit Michael Jackson’s pattern?” In other words, was Gavin a ‘special friend’ or a photo-op gone awry?

Historical accusations of sex crimes against a particular defendant reasonably tip a scale towards “Guilty”; alternately, I am also aware that pedophiles do not molest every child they come across (no pun intended). So, in being fair to Jacko, wondering how Gavin Arvizo fits in among his past boys is reasonable.

As for Janet’s and the kids’ histories, in my view they are comparatively more relevant. The JC Penny’s case, for example, challenges the thesis that Janet lacked the faculties or gumption to cook up a scheme against a powerful entity. Because that was essentially the (rejected) narrative, was it not? That the simple Latinos living in privation in an East L.A. ghetto — one allegedly a long-suffering battered wife and the alleged victim in the case had his child’s body ravaged by cancer — could not come up with a tale of conspiracy and molestation against a mega-rich celebrity. That would be the story if we reject all of the evidence against it, and it is false.

We should focus largely on the present case where Jacko was adjudicated “Not Guilty”. But while no one is actually rejecting his pedophilia (just the reliance on pedophiles’ alleged total lack of impulse control as a way to soothe the inconsistencies in the Arvizos’ story), you are suggesting the rejection of a key part of the accusers’ backgrounds that may explain why Jacko was even in a courtroom to begin with. The Prosecution continually shifted all suspicion and blame onto David Arvizo as a way to ignore that big pink elephant. I don’t think we should do that here.

Neely

I just now got to a part in transcripts that support my suspicions about Janet. On 4-21-05, beginning on page 271, the attorneys begin to debate over introducing an expert on battered women syndrome, and resulting PTSD. The defense goes into a narrative which, if it’s true, confirms my suspicions about Janet. They plan to bring in Dr. Hochman, who interviewed her and concluded that she was a lying scammer. And, they mention others who could testify to that same end. They propose to do that in defense of the prosecutions expert on battered women, whose position is that PTSD, and the aforementioned syndrome caused her to perjur herself. Her lying was all due to this disorder she alleges, apparently.

Pea

There are some documents related to that issue that I will post here below:

I will read the argument in court and return, but I will say — as far as domestic abuse goes — I can believe that Janet Arvizo was a victim of it. The interview with David Arvizo that you posted before was basically the reverse of what Janet alleged against him. However, it seems in most domestic abuse situations that both partners abuse each other.

In the Prosecution’s motion, they seemed desperate to have an expert. The motion was a pre-trial filing, and it already hints that Janet will be a very problematic witness whose behavior flies in the face of what most people would expect someone to do in the same situation. In hindsight, it’s quite ominous: if they knew she’d be so terrible and believed that only an “expert” could undo the damage she would likely wreak on their case, why bring the case at all?

Obviously, Gavin Arvizo, a young boy, made an allegation, and a prosecutor would like to test the validity of the allegation in court. But one wonders if there is a time when a prosecutor should also exercise caution.

I will return when I’ve read the transcript. 🙂

Neely

Wow, the convictions David endured are hard to ignore. I’m pondering who issued the lion’s share of abuse between the two of them. :/. Although I’m still leaning toward Janet.

The prosecutions plea to introduce the expert does make them appear to be reaching. Seemingly attempting to justify her lies, before she even tells them. They couldn’t leave her out and still bring forth a case I suppose since it was her testimony that brought about the conspiracy charges, in a nutshell. Were they actually anticipating a train wreck but chose to run that risk in hopes of justifying it with the expert?

Something she said that has resurfaced in my mind was that she observed David being attacked by, if I remember correctly, 2 security guards at JCP, and she admittedly threw herself into the middle of that chaos, in an effort to save him. When I think of battered women, this isn’t the image I conjure up…..a woman who’s willing to take on two grown men. I tend to think more along the lines of shameful, withdrawn, fearful, things along that thread. Not a spider monkey who’s willing to jump on the backs of grown men. :-). The thought that she was willing to step up against two men makes it admittedly more difficult for me to see her in a fragile light, such as I would with a truly battered woman.

Pea

Hi Neely, I finally got the chance to read the argument in the transcript, and it was similar to their pre-trial court motion on the same subject. It’s even more desperate, however, since they knew, at that point (April 21, 2005), that Janet Arvizo had been so disappointing — so ridiculous — that they needed someone to come in to stop the bleeding. It was embarrassing to read, to be honest.

D.A. Gordon Auchincloss tacitly admits that it probably isn’t totally relevant, but that he still wants it in to help explain generally why “battered women” act the way they do and why Janet lied under oath in the J.C. Penney’s case about her husband being the source of her bruises.

But, to me, it was quite clear from the earlier pre-trial motion that they fully intended to describe Janet’s conduct in the current case. The expert would’ve been there to clean up the mess. It was good the expert didn’t come in. They’ve never interviewed Janet, anyway.

I, too, was interested in the Defense’s description of Dr. Hochman’s information about Janet. I can believe that Janet suffers from Antisocial Personality Disorder, i.e., she’s a sociopath who does whatever for monetary gain. However, clinicians are often admonished to be careful applying that disorder to people who lived in urban ghettos. Nevertheless, it would explain her finding celebrity benefactors to help the family with finances.

A judge denied a request Monday by Michael Jackson’s defense team to conduct mental testing of the entertainer’s young accuser and his family, but is allowing the lawyers to subpoena existing psychological, medical, financial and military records about them.

The defense probe into these areas indicates the lawyers are compiling information in an attempt to attack the credibility of the accuser’s mother — who they claim made up the child molestation accusations against their client and allegedly used similar techniques for financial gain in the past.

During Monday’s pretrial hearing in Santa Maria, Senior Deputy District Attorney Ron Zonen objected to defense subpoenas for such documents, claiming the requests were an “undue invasion of privacy, confidentiality and privilege.”

However, Superior Court Judge Rodney Melville noted the prosecutor is not an attorney for the family and, therefore, cannot claim that those documents should remain confidential.

Judge Melville ruled the defense may subpoena such documents but must notify the subjects of the records that they have five days to file an objection, which he would then consider before releasing the papers.

The high-stakes legal wrangling is in preparation for the trial, scheduled to begin Jan. 31. Mr. Jackson has pleaded not guilty to all charges. A gag order prohibits attorneys from discussing the case.

Prosecutors have maintained the alleged victim’s family is not after money and that there is plenty of evidence to support the allegations.

The documents sought by the defense are believed to include confidential psychiatric reports linked to a civil lawsuit filed by the accuser’s mother against J.C. Penney Co. after her son was detained for alleged shoplifting in 1998. The reports, obtained by the News-Press and NBC, are from a 2001 psychological evaluation of the mother, the boy and his brother by a psychiatrist hired by J.C. Penney. The reports describe her as delusional and state that she may have made up allegations that a J.C. Penney Co. security guard attacked her and her children and then sexually molested her.

During Monday’s pretrial hearing, Mr. Zonen noted that defense lawyers were seeking the mother’s gynecological records, which he said “constituted harassment.”

In response, defense co-counsel Robert Sanger said, “I don’t want to take cheap shots at the sound bites about gynecological records, but there’s very good reason for those that I don’t want to go into right now.”

In response to the alleged 1998 J.C. Penney incident, the mother filed a $3 million lawsuit against the company, which dropped the shoplifting charges against her son and paid $137,000 to the family. The documents obtained by the News-Press and NBC were compiled by Dr. John Hochman, identified as an assistant clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Neurology at UCLA. It was noted in court Monday that the family’s civil attorney, Larry Feldman, filed an objection to the defense subpoena of medical records; however, it’s unclear if these are the Hochman records.

Quoting the mother, Dr. Hochman said that after the J.C. Penney incident, she “saw a gynecologist due to irregularities in her menstruating and she was this way because her body was traumatized and ‘every hormone in her body was being released.’ . . . There is no evidence confirming (the mother’s) testimony she had to get her hormones straightened out due to the mall episode.”

The family complained to the psychiatrist of headaches and nightmares after the incident. The children were also fearful “the bad people from J.C. Penneys” would come to their house and hurt them, Dr. Hochman said in the report.

Dr. Hochman noted that the mother did not want to answer questions and frequently claimed memory loss about her life before the incident. “She said she didn’t want to remember anything about her prior psychiatric treatment. . . . She didn’t remember where (her son) took dancing lessons.”

She frequently buried her head in her hands. “She was far more upset talking about the mall episode than about her son’s bout with cancer. Her general demeanor alternated between a blunted state and tearful hysteria.”

The boy indicated the incident was “more frightening” than the year he battled cancer, and his brother said it was “worse,” Dr. Hochman’s report stated.

The psychiatrist noted that he thought the interviews with the boy and his brother were rehearsed. He also noted “doubtful aspects” of the testimony by the family, including that it was “impossible” for all family members to have “identical stories years later.”

The police, the doctor stated, saw no injuries and heard no complaints of sexual abuse. Those charges were added to the complaint two years later.

The mother insisted that “prior to the mall incident she was living an ideal and extraordinarily virtuous life,” Dr. Hochman stated.

Defense lawyers also appear to be gearing up for an attack on the grand jury process. In response to their requests, Judge Melville on Monday ordered that the defense be given transcripts of the grand jury selection process and of written communications between grand jurors and prosecutors during the secret proceedings. The News-Press learned that the defense also subpoenaed materials the county jury commissioner used to select grand jurors. The jury selection process here is now under review by the state Supreme Court.

As for David Arvizo, I tend to agree that Janet wasn’t the complete victim. As the Defense noted in their argument, she accused him of sexual abuse at the same time they were negotiating how to split money between them? Seems like awfully convenient timing, if their facts are accurate. I don’t for a second believe that Janet Arvizo was stupid or helpless.

ShawntayUStay

Interesting article. I see similarities in this case, esp the part about the boys saying they were scared “bad people from JC Penneys” were going to hurt them, with MJ’s 2005 trial, when they said that Frank Cascio was threatening that he’d kill their parents and grandparents. Sounds like a common theme in Janet’s mind since it’s been admitted that she coached her boys to lie in the JC Penney case.

ShawntayUStay

Historical accusations of sex crimes against a particular defendant reasonably tip a scale towards “Guilty”; alternately, I am also aware that pedophiles do not molest every child they come across (no pun intended).

It’s true that the 1108 evidence presented at trial — disregarding the bombing by some of the witnesses — does present MJ as someone with a sexual problem, or at the very least, an unhealthy obsession with young boys. But because not all of his little boy friends accused him of abuse, fans believe that the norm is innocent friendship and the aberration is the accusations. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CbgY87oXIAI78X2.jpg

But clearly this picture demonstrates an obsession with boys, at best. But have fans asked themselves why MJ may have never molested all the boys in this picture? If they analyzed each of these boys’ history with MJ, perhaps MJ didn’t have the opportunity to molest them; whether it be because they relationship was extremely brief; it was a family member, the parents weren’t as “permissive” as a June Chandler, Liz Barnes, or Joy Robson; maybe the boy never shared a bed alone with MJ or slept over his house in general; or the boy simply was not “groom-able” as some of his established special friends.

I ask myself a modified question rooted in Jacko’s acknowledged pedophilia: “Does this case fit Michael Jackson’s pattern?” In other words, was Gavin a ‘special friend’ or a photo-op gone awry? Where did he fit in among Jacko’s past boys?

That’s the other point that goes with the picture, and in general, the point that should be made, IMO, with respect to all allegations that have been made against MJ. Bartucci and Kapon are acknowledged as completely false because of the relevant facts surrounding what involvement (if any) they had with MJ. And when I compare Gavin Arvizo with established special friends Manny Lewis, Jonathan Spence, James Safechuck, Wade Robson, Brett Barnes, Jordie Chandler, Frank and Eddie Cascio, Omer Bhatti, for example — where’s the similarity? We all believe that to become a special friend is to likely become one of MJ’s victims. But Gavin was not a special friend despite the prosecution’s attempt to fit a square peg in a round hole. MJ saw him, according to the facts presented in court, as a photo op, a chance to renew his damaged reputation as a “child savior” in the years following the Chandler scandal. Rabbi Shmuley Boteach was pissed that MJ ignored Gavin in 2000 while he visited. And once he felt Gavin was heal, he dropped the family like a hot potato and the Arvizos, as per their established fashion, attempted to get back into his life using effusive letters saying I love you, etc. MJ’s had them in the doc and cut ties again. Only when the proverbial shit hit the fan did he have them stay at NL. So there wasn’t the grooming or the infatuation with Gavin that MJ consistently showed his special friends.

If anything, Gavin is much more similar to Jason Francia, who was horrible on the stand for some inexplicable reason. Neither were special friends, neither had any real relationship with MJ. Jason said he was inappropriately tickled about three times between 1986 and 1990/1991. Gavin alleged alcohol influenced masturbation 2 times “that he could remember” and these are the ones Star corroborated (although his original story said 5-7 times, but that’s impossible given the timeline: http://i.imgur.com/Ux9M40G.jpg

Legend: Red box is the prosecution’s [much changed and truncated] timeline; Feb 5 when they started being with MJ; nothing happened before the 20th; 21-24th is too early for molestation according to Gavin since he said it was at the end, disregarding him originally agreeing that it happened prior to the 20th; rebuttal and CPS interview was on 20th; the Arvizos weren’t at NL between Feb 25th-Mar 2nd [blue hash marks]; MJ wasn’t at NL Mar 6-9th [green hash marks]; yellow box marking five days are the only possible dates molestation could occur and sometime in those dates, Simone and Rijo were there and stated the boys slept in the guest units. They left on Mar 12th 2003.)

I tend to believe Jason because MJ chose to settle rather than fight an allegation that the prosecutors at the time stated was not a chargeable offense (I assume because the act was too up to interpretation for a jury to clearly decide in favor of the accuser). Gavin’s he fought, so there is even the difference between Gavin and Jason. If a pedophile has a defined modus operandi and also doesn’t molest every child, coupled with the relevant facts in this case (e.g. the tiny window of available dates to commit an act against a kid MJ showed very little interest in over the course of three years, the inconsistencies, the mother’s background), how am I to believe Gavin’s allegations? There’s little to tie him with the known special friends and specifically the known special friends that accused MJ of molestation. Is this the only time where MJ went against all of his established patterns and molested a boy he wasn’t interested in in the “special friend way”? Of course anything is possible but it’s just hard for me to believe, given all the other facts about the Arvizos.

Andreas

There’s also that boy and his mother from Switzerland who called the Chandlers and the police. Jackson had been left with the boy dancing and had touched his private area. If Wade is telling the truth he was also sexually molested the very first night he was staying at Neverland, so it happened very quickly, and therefore before Wade became a “special friend”, wouldn’t you say? Aaron Carter said Jackson was at the foot of his bed in the morning. There’s also the alleged tape with his nephew, if thats anything close to true. And you know, in smaller way, just that porn magazines were spread around Neverland for boys to “discover”, seems to me to express some kind of recklessness. Yes, and Jason Francia, as you mention.

So, I don’t know about the pattern being too unorthodox for him to molest Gavin, if the claim is Gavin wasn’t special enough of a friend. I think MJ was capable of compulsive behavior with boys to some degree. The book with Rabbi Schmuley also shows that Jackson did seem to refer to Gavin quite a lot, and he seemed very important to Jackson, at least in some way. When asked what MJs dream woman would be, he answered she would have to be as into taking care of Gavin as he was. Plus, he did seem to take a lot of credit for Gavin getting rid of his cancer, which if he meant it, and I think he really did, probably is something he was very proud of. ‘Special friend’, but Gavin certainly was something, and special to him at some point.

However, in the 60 Minutes interview Ed Bradley gave Michael Jackson a golden chance to explain who the 2005 accusers were, and what really happened. What did Michael Jackson say? Oh, he said he got busloads of kids coming in every day, thousands of kids visits him every single day, and the accusers were simply “one of them”. In other words, he diminished Gavin to a mere one-day visitor among “thousands of others”. Jackson acted like that was all there was to it, dismissed any need to talk more about them, and didn’t even want to mention them by name.

It seems dishonest to me, and makes me question why he would need to lie about it. If Jackson really was innocent, why not let the audience, his fans, everybody, know who these people were, what had happened, give his version of his, but instead he does what he does best when he tries to hide something: lies.

ShawntayUStay

Gavin doesn’t fit the pattern if we argue that his special friends are the ones that MJ sought out, groomed, and later molested. I don’t think it’s logical to have it both ways, that on one hand MJ could have a defined MO whereby he selected young boys (and their families), groomed them (and their parents) into compliance over X amount of time, and then found a way to consistently (and insistently) be alone with them in a bedroom so that he could demonstrate what “love” was; and on another hand he’s this compulsive sloppy pedo that will molest any kid that gets close enough. They don’t gel together.

The prosecution in their opening statement argued that MJ was freaked out by the fallout from the Bashir documentary and basically did whatever he could to mitigate the situation, which included having the entire Arvizo family be kept under lock-and-key at NL, all the while saying he began to seduce Gavin (and Star, originally) by teaching him curse words, giving him alcohol and showing him porn. They knew, however, that if the argument was that MJ has a defined pattern about his special friends, they had to say that MJ was pursuing Gavin prior to all the fallout, with the alleged hours long phone calls, gifts, etc, and that he’d had this kid in his mind for years. That Gavin was a special friend that “looked just like” Jordie (he didn’t), ergo he was molested “just like” Jordie. But the reality as came out in court painted the picture that MJ was not “pursuing” Gavin at all; the letters show that the Arvizos were pursuing him after he’d cut off all contact. And given the teeny, tiny 5 day window of opportunity to molest (what do you think about the ever-changing timeline, by the way?), I’m supposed to believe that Gavin was being groomed for a while and believe that it was just an alcohol influenced, spur of the moment masturbation by a desperate pedo? I don’t know about that……….

Have you ever considered that MJ was trying to make a good impression in front of a holy man, LOL? If you really think about it, MJ was saying a lot of his typical stuff about sick kids, making himself look like a child savior. It doesn’t read as anything deeper than that and apparently, Rabbi Shmuley agreed. Actions spoke louder than the saccharin words MJ was spewing about Gavin because it is the Rabbi’s opinion that he doesn’t think that MJ molested Gavin because MJ’s actions demonstrated very little interest, to the point that the Rabbi felt he should mention the disparity. Gavin was a photo op, not someone MJ really cared about.

You mention the 60 Minutes interview and actually I’d say that MJ’s words are extremely consistent with the MJ’s actions the Rabbi observed and what came out in court in 2005, namely he spoke dismissively about Gavin as one of many because that’s exactly how he saw him. He was a “one of many” photo op. That gels with his cutting off contact with them in 2001-2002, and only calling back to film for Bashir and than cutting off contact again until early 2003. Also, if MJ didn’t want to talk about Gavin, by name and otherwise, couldn’t it also be because he couldn’t stand to think about these “wretched Arvizos” and all the shit they were putting him through? Same could be said for his mindset during so-called “pajama day”.

As for “unorthodox” MO, Wade claimed molestation on the 2nd night, for clarification, but MJ fell completely “in love” with Wade and wanted to take him alone with him to Japan. He orchestrated the move of Wade and family to Australia after having spent a total of 8 weeks with Wade alone during the interim 2 years before the move. He signed Wade onto his music label, etc etc…you know the story. The relationship was far reaching and since Wade was a mega fanboy who was extremely young malleable, it isn’t hard to imagine grooming would be more swiftly accomplished. But a big 13 year old boy with street smarts? When was he groomed or was it just the alcohol that did it?

I also don’t put much stake in the Ulrike story as there is little to corroborate it. Aaron Carter spent lots of time with MJ and MJ clearly like him a lot, so it’s not surprising that he’d attempt to make a move on him after all that. There is little similarity. But as I said, the argument by the prosecution was that Gavin was a special friend, MJ always molested his special friends, therefore MJ molested Gavin. I have yet to see how that is true…….

Andreas

I understand what you mean Shawntay, but perhaps you’re exaggerating things a little bit? You say Jackson usually sought after the kids he was after. Did he really seek out Jordy himself? Wasn’t it Dave Schwartz who asked Jackson to make Jordy a call? And Wade Robson and Omer Bhatti I think got to meet and hang with Jackson because they won dance contests. They were brought to him. Terry George knocked on his door for an interview. That’s not too far from a kid with terminal cancer wanting to meet a celebrity, is it?

The grooming allegation of Gavin still have some merit because of the porn and the wine, in my opinion. Most 40+ year old pedophile men don’t show preteen boys porn without any reason. How do you really view this?

Gavin was a different and unique situation because of the cancer. Either way, Jackson really seemed to hit off with the idea of him helping a little boy with cancer, and Gavin was at Neverland multiple times in that period. As you know, David Arvizo was given a SUV for the family to come more often to Neverland. It seemed like more than a photo-op. In this period Gavin definitely seemed very special to MJ. In the Rabbi Schmuley book the rabbi says he was so impressed by MJs seemingly altruisitic behavior towards Gavin that he talked about it on hundreds of speeches. Jackson also talks about Gavin quite a few times in an inspirational way through out the book. Its difficult to say if Jackson groomed the family like he did with others, or if he really just felt either genuinely sympathy or saw potential imagebuilding by hanging with a boy with cancer, or a combination. Its a little bit sinister to think that he had any plans to molest a boy with cancer, but who knows. If Michael really saw his molestation as something that wasn’t a harmful thing, and perhaps even a good thing, as some pedophiles do, I don’t see why a kid with cancer should be spared.

what do you think about the ever-changing timeline, by the way

I haven’t investigated it in a while, but my earlier hunch was simply that neither Star or Gavin was keeping track of time being in Neverland, so the persecution had to assume temporary dates and when details came in they had to change it. I can sort of relate to that. When I was a kid I usually didn’t even know what month it was.

Would you really demand a 12-13 year old boy to remember the exact date he was molested? If it was years ago? Its kids, and I think kids often don’t think that way. I only know a few grown up that keeps dates when things happen. I can believe their whole experience in Neverland became a blur. Why is that a stretch?

Either way, in fear of repeating the old point, if this was a planned hit job for Jackson’s money or whatever you’d expect them to make more exact claims, including exact dates, wouldn’t you? You’d expect the whole family to drill a certain story, at least to a degree, since you’re showcasing yourself against the whole world? Just the vagueness of the Arvizos somehow to me makes them seem more credible to me. It does not seemed planned.

if MJ didn’t want to talk about Gavin, by name and otherwise, couldn’t it also be because he couldn’t stand to think about these “wretched Arvizos” and all the shit they were putting him through?

He dimished a family he gave an SUV to come to Neverland more often to, a boy he took credit for getting rid of his cancer, a boy that had slept in his bedroom, a family he evidently tried to control, to one of the thousands of children and families that had one-day visits to Neverland? To me it seemed like he simply lied. If you know any details about their relationship its ridiculously dishonest. If he felt betrayed by a family he thought he helped and knew, it why wouldn’t he just say so? Instead of implying he didn’t even know them.

I think MJ wanted the audience to simply believe he was targeted and victimized by a completely random family he never had anything to do with, and that was it.

Perhaps he didn’t like to think about the Arvizos, as you suggest, but he was asked to give his side of his story, and had an uppertunity to explain something the whole world tried to understand, and instead he lies through his teeth? That is not suspicious to you? He plead the fifth under the case too. I don’t get why he wouldn’t tell us what really happened if he was presumably innocent. Why would anyone who is falsely accused by a family for molesting their child, simply lie about barely having anything to do with them, and then plead the fifth? Does that make sense in the slightest?

Pea

About the timeline…. we have to remember that the Arvizos left Neverland on Mar 12, 2003, and Janet gave her first telling of the story to Dr. Stan Katz on May 15, 2003 — the kids on May 29. So we are not talking about “years” between the events, only about 2 months. Even then Katz said the family wasn’t good with dates.

These are not young children we’re talking about — these are preteens, teenagers, and an adult woman. They should have some mastery of the time… but, obviously, it is more expedient to make one’s story as amorphous as possible so that it may “fit” into a timeframe, as needed.

One point about inconsistencies….

I’ve been hearing people repeat the notion that if a story has a bunch of inconsistencies, that means it’s true, but if the converse happens — that it’s solid — that means it’s likely fiction. Dr. Stan Katz, the glib TV psychologist, said this on the stand, too, and I immediately found it suspect. How convenient for someone wanting to continue to believe an accuser as their “story” falls apart!

Katz’s testimony, which was deliberately and conspicuously truncated by the Prosecution, was quite amusing in this regard because he says two contradictory things that he wants the public to believe are as compatible as peanut butter and jelly.

On page 4305, lines 3-14 (or page 264), he says that children making up false stories will have trouble keeping them consistent. Which makes sense to most people — remember the old adage, “A tangled web we weave when we first practice to deceive”? But under questioning by Mesereau, he backtracks his remarks on that salient point, and tries to clean up what was obviously a gaffe (p. 4306, lines 4-28; p. 4307, line 1, or pages 266-268):

4 Q. You said something about children who are
5 making false allegations tend to be inconsistent
6 when they describe those false allegations, correct?
7 A. No. What I said was, in fact, it’s the
8 opposite. Children who make false allegations are
9 usually very consistent and almost scripted in what
10 they say. They exaggerate, they embellish, they
11 take every opportunity to make a positive into a
12 negative.
13 Children who have been molested tend to be
14 inconsistent. They have problems with memory
15 retrieval. Their data storage is not great. They
16 don’t remember dates and times, and they don’t
17 remember exactly what happened. And they don’t tend
18 to embellish and exaggerate. When you interview
19 these children and you ask them if something
20 happened, they won’t say, “Oh, yeah, that happened
21 too.” They’ll say, “No, that didn’t happen.”
22 Children who fabricate will all of a sudden
23 tell you that everything happened to them by
24 everybody, and so they exaggerate because they don’t
25 know intellectually when to stop.
26 Q. So what you’re telling the jury is, in your
27 experience, exaggeration and embellishment can be
28 signs of false allegations of sexual abuse? 4306
1 A. That is correct.

In other words, by Katz’s own testimony, there must be no “rule of thumb”, and, therefore, quantifying the relative consistency of a child’s story is totally subjective, right?

But even if we take Katz’s analysis as valid, it still wouldn’t bode well for the Arvizos. Star has embellished and exaggerated (was kept from seeing clocks, was given a sleeping pill, for example), and he has been inconsistent about the allegation that he, too, was groped by Jacko, eventually abandoning it. Gavin couldn’t keep how many times he’d been molested straight, but then wants us to take his problem memory for granted — “I can remember 2 of the 5-7 times, but the rest is like remembering back to kindergarten” (paraphrased).

And we already know that Janet Arvizo’s story is filled with embellishments and exaggerations and every opportunity is taken to turn a positive into a negative, though Katz’s would likely also like us to overlook those, too — “Oh, there could be a problem with perception versus reality”, i.e., still believe something happened to the poor woman because her mental illness makes her say silly things.

To be fair to the boys, I have wondered why they didn’t get the “seeing Jacko nude” allegation correct, and I thought that could be a sign that something happened. (For the record, I don’t disbelieve all of their allegations.) However, I snapped out of it quickly. Star stated Jacko sat there, bearing a “5-7 inch erection”, and told them nakedness was “natural”; Gavin, alternately, said that Jacko was embarrassed and ran out of the room, only being there briefly. I have concluded, as what was indicated by Mary Holzer’s testimony, that it is very possible that the boys had a story but Star, when he relates the tale, will embellish and exaggerate because he might suffer from a touch of pseudologia fantastica. That seems the most logical explanation, in my head, about why their stories seem to differ. (Holzer stated that Janet said Gavin can tell the story properly but it was Star who was the problem.)

I would like to see a more plausible explanation for their disparate stories that vindicates them. Katz just doesn’t help, in my opinion, no matter how it is spent. As I believe Shawntay(?) said before, if the whole family is there to corroborate each others’ stories, then all of them have to be credible to be believed.

Andreas

Alright, about the timeline, and “years”, I was obviously referring to Gavin’s testimony in the 2005 case. From March 2003 to March in 2005, so approx two years. Its true he talked to Katz before that, but that wasn’t really a critical cross-examination, and I don’t think he was questioned about everything as meticiously under a microscope as he was later.

I think Dr. Stan Katz testimony was largely in favor of Gavin. As I understand it he was not allowed by the judge to say if he believed Gavin and the family or not in those meetings, but its easy to see he did by reading between the lines of the testimony. He mentions numorus things in favor of the Arvizos. “Very, very few false allegations made with alleged perpetrators outside the family by a child over the age of five.”
Later Katz says can’t recall ever seeing(or knowing about) any false allegations by any adolescents or preadolescents who were making allegations for profit, and he’s been involved in thousands of cases, and also says he’s up to date with all research on these cases.

He says this about supposed male pre-teenagers lying about being sexually abused by a male.It would be extremely unusual for a child who’s developmentally at a stage where he’s trying to figure out who he is, and to actually become a man, to make an allegation which would suggest that he’s had inappropriate sexual relationships with a male. It would be extremely rare because these children are so protective and so guilt-ridden and shamed by any behavior that’s extraordinary and extra-normal. So it would be highly unusual in my experience for a 12- or 13-year-old to make false allegations regarding a male perpetrator.

As we know Gavin’s story was quite fittingly one of a guilt ridden boy, both according to himself, his family, and Katz. He was also teased so much at his school(being called the f-word) that he had to change schools. Probably not a pleasant experience. Its quite unlikely he still felt such a strong armed loyalty to his mother enough to lie for money, or whatever the alternative claim is, to innocently frame Jackson for masturbating him…. for a future advantage.

Katz says about this.In my experience, a child who is going to lie and fabricate cannot be consistent and hold that very long, because children are impulsive, they can’t delay gratification. You can’t tell a child, “Years from now, if you lie, something good will happen.” Children are very much living in the now.

I don’t really agree with you that Gavin or Star embellished and exaggerrated their story. More often it was vague, it was(or could be seen as) inconsistent, perhaps incomplete, they had problems remembering(Gavin’s testimony was full of “I don’t remember”), and most importantly, Gavin’s molestation claim itself is very vague, not very straight forward, very awkward and not even a very damning one, where Michael was a monster that forced upon him everything. Jackson only masturbated him, and Jackson awkwardly tried to make Gavin masturbate him to, but Gavin refused shamefully, and Jackson had to tell Gavin not to be ashamed or guilty. Its not exactly an exaggerate or embellished story. Quite the opposite. According to what Katz is saying this makes it more plausible, and more believable.

I think what Katz was referring to with “exaggerrated and embellished” was when kids are lying they’ll be the exact opposite of inconsistent, they’ll sound a lot more cocksure, and build and build and build upon their claims with no limits.

Katz exact quote was:“Children who make false allegations are usually very consistent and almost scripted in what they say. They exaggerate, they embellish, they take every opportunity to make a positive into a negative. Children who have been molested tend to be inconsistent. They have problems with memory retrieval. Their data storage is not great. They don’t remember dates and times, and they don’t remember exactly what happened. Children who fabricate will all of a sudden tell you that everything happened to them by everybody, and so they exaggerate because they don’t know intellectually when to stop. ”

Another thing in favor of Gavin in above quote is not remembering dates and times.

Right, I think the example you bring up is a great example of what I’ve been talking about. Okay, so Gavin and Star both claim they saw Jackson coming naked into the room with an erection, but they had different recollections of what happened after. Gavin said he left the room, while Star said he sat down on the bed with him. Its a similiar “ish” story, but its inconsistent as they contradict each other.

Now, if we think about it logically they were either telling the truth, or they were lying about their story. There’s no other options, right? If it was a lie, they sort of had to have agreed on a fictional story beforehand, correct? Either the mother made it up, or the to of them did, or all of them invented it, correct? And finally, if they did, you’d certainly expect them to train such a story into their muscle memory, before performing in front of a court? It would be an important thing to do if you were going to lie in court. The way I see it is, some of their statement might be inconsistent, perhaps in need of an explanation, BUT.. it’s definitely not planned. And if its not planned, well, it only leaves the other option. In other words, they probably were telling the truth, as they vaguely recollected it. Why their stories is a little bit inconsistent to me is not as important, but my guess is simply that one of them simply remembered it differently or wrong. People remember things differently that all the time, anyway, so why is that so hard to believe?

ShawntayUStay

Oh no I’m not exaggerating! MJ pursued the boys he wanted, regardless of how he initially met them. Yes, it was David Schwartz that gave MJ Jordie’s number and asked him to call, but MJ saw Jordie and thought he was worth the trouble, apparently. Then he called him in 1992 while he was overseas (with Brett Barnes in tow). After they built their relationship in Feb 1993, Jordie claims MJ always wanted to be with him and he felt he couldn’t say “I don’t want to hang out today” because MJ would cry and always be around anyway. That’s pursuit. Same with James Safechuck and his family being invited to Havyenhurst that first time, and subsequent visits of the boy, and MJ asking James to join him on the Bad Tour for several months. He wanted this boy around him as much as possible; after the tour he was still flying James to various destinations to stay with him. Brett Barnes spent almost the entire year of 1992 jet setting and going on vacation with MJ when he only started to physically be around MJ in Dec 1991 (and started sharing his bed a week into the first NL visit). He definitely pursued Macauley Culkin after seeing him in Home Alone.

Gavin wasn’t pursued, even by his own words. Doesn’t the contact cutoff demonstrate that? He was only interested in Gavin when he had cancer, 2001-2002 (except the Bashir filming) to early 2003 they had zero contact. Keeping the Arvizo family away from the media in those few weeks of Feb-Mar 2003 is the only reason he had anything to do with them if I assume that the lack of contact was because of disinterest (as it suggests).

I think it’s not necessarily mutually exclusive to feel compassion for a suffering child and see the opportunity for image-rebuilding. I think MJ was doing just that. He was allowing Gavin to visit NL in 2000 even when he wasn’t there, giving him the SUV to have for transport to the hospital, giving him toys and a computer, helping with a blood drive, etc would all go to MJ’s generous character and would rebuild in image tarnished by child molestation allegations — it would show that this guy is harmless to kids, the image he had before 1993. And one has to remember that MJ was said to have “two minds” about kids — he viewed one group as photo ops/charity cases (with whom he showed fleeting interest), and the other group were his “friends”, the kids that MJ saw as his peers and who entered his inner world (like the Cascio brothers, Wade, James, etc…the special friends). I have no doubt that MJ viewed Gavin as the former, which explains his eventual lack of interest, i.e. “My work is done; he’s healed.”

Would you really demand a 12-13 year old boy to remember the exact date he was molested?

In order for an outsider who was not privy to the actual event to take away the freedom of an individual accused of child molestation, one would reasonably expect the alleged victim to remember when it happened. I don’t think that is a heavy burden at all, esp when you consider that we aren’t talking about young children; we’re talking about a teenaged boy who clearly isn’t an idiot. He should remember when it happened because he told the story about 2 months after it allegedly occurred. That’s not years, that’s barely a few months! Actually, it’s quite telling IMO that both boys, esp Star, had such great memories about details of the house, what they did in Miami, etc, but they can’t remember when abuse allegedly occurred? How does that make sense? Gavin agreed with Sneddon when he offered up the explanation for their positive review of MJ in the rebuttal tape that the abuse happened before the tape and MJ was just making sure to lock them down into statements about him that would contradict a molestation claim if they should ever tell. That’s why the timeline had to be changed multiple times; they couldn’t keep even the basic story straight.

The grooming allegation of Gavin still have some merit because of the porn and the wine, in my opinion. Most 40+ year old pedophile men don’t show preteen boys porn without any reason. How do you really view this?

How do I view it? Well my opinion is this: the first porn showing in 2000 was MJ’s attempt to gauge their interest, to see of they could be groomed. From the Arvizo boys account, they didn’t really say too much about it and they turned to computer off and went to sleep. I don’t think MJ got the right vibe from them, which would explain the later contact cutoff. As for the porn and alcohol at NL during 2003, I got the feeling from their testimonies that they were the ones looking at his porn on their own. And if Star is to be believed, all the incidents involving porn showing were uneventful, that MJ, Star, sometimes Gavin, and Aldo just strummed through them and that was it. At worst, those times sounded like an irresponsible adult man permissively allowing boys to look at naked women. It can be interpreted multiple ways I guess but it didn’t come off as “sinister” as the image the prosecution conjured up, at least the way Star put it.

As for the alcohol, I think it’s a combination of permissive adult allowing kids to drink underage (including older teens Davellin and Marie Nicole Cascio) and the Arvizo boys getting alcohol themselves. I’m not convinced MJ was plying them with alcohol. Star had one helluva good memory of the layout of the wine cellar and the lounge area where the key was, but I’m supposed to believe that he only went down there with MJ and didn’t know exactly where the key was in the lounge, respectively? It’s hard to believe.

But really, Andreas, I’m curious: why do you believe Gavin was molested, despite the verdict? Is it because you don’t like the thought that a person would lie about something like this (which is understandable)? Is it just because MJ was a pedo and paid off two kids? Because I see no real evidence that supports their claim; on the contrary I see lots of pointless lies and inconsistencies that supports the claim that they lied. At best — and I’m being generous here — the information is up to interpretation, as we can see from the flow of this conversation, LOL. So it would essentially come down to which one a person is inclined to believe, MJ or Gavin. It’s sad because we will never no the truth, and there are so many that want to disbelieve the verdict so they are stuck using the same facts and evidence that acquitted MJ unanimously but are trying to make that fit into the opposing narrative of guilt.

The jury acquitted MJ without reading some of the stuff that was contained in the documents that IMO would only further support the idea of his innocence, stuff that made Janet look suspicious and malevolent. Likewise, the jury (and the public) didn’t get to hear the settlement amounts and accompanying fee schedule that would demonstrate his likely guilt in the Chandler case (of course that has no relevance to Gavin). People say that the Arvizos if they really were after money could have sued MJ civilly, but that’s plain ridiculous. A lower burden of proof would have got them laughed out of court quicker because Janet’s skeletons would be even more on display, and the co-conspirators the prosecution kept unindicted would have given their story (finally). Aldo Cascio was name dropped a lot by Star, he could have dispelled some of their stories as well. All this plus the NG verdict, it would have been a pointless endeavor. The only good thing would be that MJ would have been deposed and questioned, finally, about his general relationship/behavior with boys.

Andreas

I’m curious: why do you believe Gavin was molested, despite the verdict? Is it because you don’t like the thought that a person would lie about something like this (which is understandable)? Is it just because MJ was a pedo and paid off two kids?

Hehe, I don’t think there’s a huge emotional reason you can ‘get’ me on this, Shawntay. 😉 I don’t feel attached to the Arvizos, nor do I have any motive to believe every single accuser of Jackson, nor do I follow blindly whatever the presecution says. I simply look at the facts, the testimonies and I think its clearly in the favor of the Arvizos. I obviously understand we don’t agree on that, but I think thats simply it.

Its true I don’t see much value in the verdict though, but then again I don’t think we see the reasons for the verdict or the jurors the same. First off, to state the obvious: Jurors can be wrong. They can come to both wrong and right conclusions for both the right or the wrong reasons. It happens every day in court, and I don’t expect you need examples for that. Jurors are just people. They often have no expertize in what they are judging. They also bring all sorts of stuff to the table, and I think especially child molestation cases are complex and sometimes so incredibly difficult to understand. Most people don’t know what a ‘nice guy’ molester is, nor a ‘compliant victim’, and according to Ken Lanning these are elementary terms if you’re going to understand cases like this. So the NG verdict as a conclusion means nothing big to me without looking at the reasons behind it, and I see many many problems.

It also seems like you think the jury aligns with your own view, just because it has the same conclusion, and I don’t think that is correct. If we exclude Hultman, Parker, Calls and arguably Rodriguez most of the jurors seemed to think Jackson was an innocent man in general, meaning not even a pedophile. Many of them believed the defense narrative of a poor celeb and humanitarian who loved kids targeted by malicious people, that being the Arvizos, The Chandlers or anybody. Some of them even mocked Jason Francia after the testimony and was almost thrown out of the jury. They also didn’t agree with you(or me) that Jackson served alcohol to minors, because they acquitted him of that, which makes me value their overall verdict less, as there was several witnesses to kids, including the Arvizos, being drunk at Neverland.

There’s also a lot of evidence and testimony in support of the conspiracy charges, but those were for whatever reasons acquitted too. Three of the jurors, according to Ellie Parker, was huge fans of Jackson even, constantly defending Jackson. (Pauline Coccoz even went to a celebration MJ party as a ‘special appearance’, which to me is beyond absurd.) So it was a strange collection of people, and seemingly a strange set of dynamics within the group according to most stories. I think there’s several reasons why he was finally aquitted, but of course Janet Arvizo’s testimony at minimum made things seem not beyond a reasonable doubt. She made a mess out of the case in many ways.

Besides that, I also think the persecutions story kind of backfired with the prior acts strategy, which broadened the claims against Jackson by multiples. While a good idea in theory to build a foundation that MJ had a history of molesting children, and having several staff members testify seeing Jackson molest several other boys, it also made it far more important to be able to prove these claims too. They raised the stakes. Tom Mesereau made a genius move actually calling these same boys in as witnesses, who then denied being molested in court. Devestating, I think. So you kind of had an even more outrageous story with trying to paint a picture of Jackson leading a decadent pedo-camp and molesting many boys of his choosing left and right, completely the opposite of the defense story of a beautiful humanitarian being targeted and excusing himself for being too trusting and vulnerable. I think its simply difficult for normal people to understand why someone would deny being molested if they really were molested, and here you had guys often sleeping in bed with Jackson saying it was all innocent, so it all backfired on Sneddon and Zonen’s narrative. Ironically the claims are all probably true though, even if Culkin and Barnes has not come forward.

As for Gavin not being a special friend, I’m sort of on the fence I admit. I need to research it more I suppose. My hunch is he probably was one, kind of, but maybe not as strong as the others. Jackson perhaps didn’t find him as molestable, as you too propose, or maybe found other more promising leads, who knows, and left him off. I don’t think he was just a photo-op. Jackson was interested in young boys, and I don’t think Gavin was an exception to the rule. Gavin was given a watch worth 75.000$ too, and I think thats not something you really do if you don’t think they’re special in some form. I personally don’t think you need Gavin to be a ‘special friend'(depending on the definition) for him to be molested though. The situation or the claims were only within the days they were trapped at Neverland anyway, and you seem to believe Jason Francia, and he was not your typical special friend either.

Neely

It’s been said Jackson was actively grooming Gavin when he was sick, calling him often, and talking for hours at time. It was stated by several witnesses. If he was grooming him in that time period, (I believe the phone calls took place), how can one explain the lack of action until well over a year later, after not even having any contact with him? In summary, he groomed him heavily, went no contact for over a year, called him for a documentary appearance, then molested him in the glare of the public eye and scrutiny? That doesn’t really fit into the pedophile profile. He had more than ample opportunity to molest him immediately following the phone calls, when the Arvizos began staying at Neverland. Yet, he chose a much riskier approach, and held off all his impulses, which are apparently nearly impossible to suppress, until he was under the microscope?

ShawntayUStay

Exactly. That’s what makes me scratch my head: he’s grooming Gavin, then cuts off contact for almost a whole year, calls Gavin back and shoots the scene, cuts off contact again, then collects the family, lets them stay at NL during intense, unrelenting media scrutiny (if you just look at the articles written during this time, MJ was getting hit from left and right), and then does what everybody is accusing him of while he’s vehemently working to get people to not think he’s capable of doing that very thing.

… lets them stay at NL during intense, unrelenting media scrutiny (if you just look at the articles written during this time, MJ was getting hit from left and right), and then does what everybody is accusing him of while he’s vehemently working to get people to not think he’s capable of doing that very thing.

I’m wondering, was MJ aware of the maelstrom around him at that time, or was he cocooned away from all that, oblivious to the media storm over the documentary? As far as I recall he was removed from the actions being taken in his name, events that were being directed by his coterie. If he was in his “safe place”, ensconced at Neverland and unaware of what was going on in the outside world that would change this argument significantly.

ShawntayUStay

Why would you think he wasn’t aware? He’s human! An individual as sensitive and narcissistic as MJ wasn’t concerned with all the negative stories? From all I’ve read about MJ in general, he was very much aware of how he was being perceived in the media. Look how he was always comparing himself to other artists, how he ranked on the charts compared to them. MJ planted those fake tabloid stories about himself in an effort to try to control the press, and felt that the press can be manipulated. Many of his songs are about the media, for example Tabloid Junkie, Leave Me Alone, Threatened, They Don’t Care About Us, Scream, etc. Look how he talked about the media at Al Sharpton’s National Action Network; he hated people not following that story lined he created about himself!

With that said, there would have to be good evidence that MJ would defy common sense and molest a kid that everyone is saying he did, while he and his people are trying to clean up the mess. Actually, I’d say you’d have to suspend rational disbelief in order to even contemplate the Arvizo story making sense in that regard. Folks say “It’s Michael Jackson, he’s weird and nothing he does is conventional”, but that’s an assumption based on his media persona. Does that explanation square with the facts in this case? I’m not so sure.

There could be many reasons. I don’t know one way or the other, that’s why I was *wondering* 🙂

Do you know which was the case? Is it in the transcripts? I don’t remember reading anything other than lots of people doing things on MJ’s behalf, I’m not sure if MJ was oblivious to it all or whether he was actively involved in everything.

Neely

I can’t imagine that he wouldn’t be trailing the whole media circus precisely when his image was on the line. It was a big deal for him to agree to it, it was a big deal to open up, and a big deal to air it. I get the sense that there was chaos around him as they all scrambled to brainstorm. How could he not be aware? It’s possible, but it doesn’t seem probable. He knew this doc was an effort to correct his image. The frenzy that ensued…..he surely knew about that.

Pea

I was looking through a worldwide article database about two days ago, wanting to know what all hell had broken loose following the documentary, so I searched “Michael Jackson” “Bashir” in the year 2003. I discovered that there was chatter about the film in the UK before its airing, and I remembered David LeGrand testifying that Jacko was a little concerned with the reports that were coming out — they’d portrayed him in a way that he hadn’t “OK’d”. (Allegedly Bashir promised Jacko that he’d be able to review the documentary’s final cut in exchange for the interview.)

As I saw in the database, as the days closed in on the film’s airing in the UK, more and more reports were saying he looked crazy and delusional going on shopping sprees and living with mannequins…. To be honest, I actually felt sorry for Michael: as Shawntay pointed out, given his sensitivity and narcissism, you knew he was suffering massively; it probably felt like an ominous bubble was going to pop.

Then the film aired, and numerous articles — ping-ponging around the globe — started questioning his parenting, intimidating he was a weird pedophile, was crazy and delusional, etc. Jacko started saying he felt betrayed by Bashir, and he was so upset that he cut his friend magician Uri Gellar out of his life for even introducing them.

When the documentary aired in the U.S., of course the articles were even worse, and The Smoking Gun published Jordie Chandler’s lurid declaration from 1993. Ed Bradley, who eventually got to interview Jacko after he was arrested in November 2003, stated that when TSG published the declaration, Jacko, who’d agreed to an interview to rebut Bashir’s documentary, vanished into thin air — none of his people would return Bradley’s calls. (Jacko issued a statement essentially saying it was malicious to have posted Jordie’s words when the suit had been settled.)

Then you had yahoos like attorney Gloria Allred and Carole Lieberman petitioning to get him investigated by child services! It was a massacre!

Jacko was frenzied, no doubt. While I think he was probably depressed (and angry), I don’t think he was unaware. How could he be? The Prosecution even pointed out that it was hectic at Camp Jacko following the film. Also, Jacko’s team supposedly hiring lawyers in the UK for Janet Arvizo to also complain about Bashir’s characterizations shows how tightly wound he was about his image. He wanted to do the rebuttal documentary to stop the bleeding!

Another instance worth noting, when he dangled Blanket, he got all of his celebrity friends to speak out in support of his parenting. Everything was a controlled. He was Michael Jackson, the King of Pop — I can’t imagine a time when he didn’t give a shit about his image!

Ironically, I would argue that keeping the Arvizos from the media — “imprisoning” them, as Janet claimed — is more likely than a molestation. I don’t think that happened, as they returned and left more than once, but it’s more believable than Jacko going ahead and haphazardly diddling the boy people already suspected him of diddling. It just doesn’t make sense, and doesn’t jive with the Jacko I’ve researched for going on 7 years or the facts of this particular case (i.e. not being interested in Gavin, except cynically as an… image booster).

I’ll add one more point: when the storm had died down and the Arvizos were out of his wig, Jacko seemed to revert back to his more boy-interested behaviors, like being creepy with Aaron Carter, snuggling up with 7-year-old Juju in bed, and partying with boys at the Mirage. I don’t think that Jacko existed when Gavin et al were around.

Mahoney

Seemed like MJ had completely given-up on making rational decisions by 2001… Who knows what was (or wasn’t) going through that drug-addled brain of his by the time 2003 rolled around.

Lest we forget he was waggling his own infant-child over a balcony during this period… So who knows what his thought process was like during this era?

If the guy can do that in front of the entire world and get away with it, then what would he do behind closed doors, despite what was happening at the time?

This is a bit of an ad hominem I admit, but his judgement and self-control was completely out the freakin’ window (just like Blanket!) by this point.

And that jacket is the most gloriously hideously horribly tackiest thing I’ve ever seen… And I’ve been on Holiday to Blackpool.

ShawntayUStay

I think one of his cuckoo fans made that jacket for him, LOL. It is a bit of a hot mess.

I see your point but I then ask myself, “Is that an assumption that can hold under scrutiny?” That, I don’t know. At the risk of sounding like I’m defending MJ, I’m not so sure I can compare the baby dangling with the Arvizo situation. While definitely a huge miscalculation on his part, it would be more of a split second gaffe than anything with criminal intent.

Alternately, the Bashir situation was building for weeks and he was under intense censure day after day. He wasn’t insulating himself from that, as his actions show (example, his plan to hold a press conference in Miami and the decision to create the rebuttal documentary that aired on Fox), so I reject the “coccooning” argument as a viable explanation for molestation. You seem to be suggesting that drugs/alcohol caused poor decision making on MJ’s part?

That’s a more viable option, I guess, but you can’t take that explanation in a vacuum. Like, for example, how does that mesh with the facts of only a calculated five day window of opportunity to molest at the tail end of their stay at NL, when they’d been with him off and on for weeks and alleged that he was showing them porn and giving them alcohol? (The five day window is likely smaller because according to testimony from Rijo/Simone Jackson, the boys stayed in the guest units sometime during their visit.)

If the argument of a drug/wine addled brain is used, is that the only way it would be conceivable that MJ molested Gavin during the media firestorm? Or, rather, Is that enough to cover all the inconsistencies? That, I’m not sure of.

…his plan to hold a press conference in Miami and the decision to create the rebuttal documentary that aired on Fox

Were they MJ’s plans, or those around him’s plans? I can’t remember reading either way but I have a indistinct memory it was those around him who were orchestrating the “rehabilitation”.

Mahoney

ha,

well… I did throw in the caveat of it being an ad hominem attack… I’m sneaky like that.

I’m fully aware that just because the guy dangled an infant child off a balcony – could bare little to no relation to if he can or can’t keep his hands to himself when he has to.

I just think it speaks to his lack of judgement and clouded thought-process during this period, and that maybe this fact should be taken into consideration when discussing the probability of inappropriate behavior with Gavin at this point.

I wonder just how “out of it” he was during this period? I’m assuming once the Bashir poo-storm hit, MJ didn’t decide to pull back on the drugs… The guy obviously had a small issue of dealing with reality.

Have you also noticed for the last 8-9 yrs of his life, you his eyelids seemed so heavy you could barely see his beautiful doe-peepers? Not one public appearance did he seem fully awake… Poor bastard.

In closing your honor; I’d just like to say HEAL THE WORLD.

*Dances around inflatable globe with several multi-racial/confused looking children, then dresses as a space man, straps jet pack on and leaves comments thread”.

Kat

I feel the same way. It seems like all the drugs and booze had half destroyed his brain by the time the second child abuse allegations came rolling. During that time he dangled Blanket out of the window, said it was normal to sleep with other people’s children and suggested everyone should do it while filming a documentary, came to court dressed in pajamas, claimed that his low album sales was a conspiracy, and lied about being brutalized by the police when they had been entirely civil with him. I don’t think it’s a big stretch to say that he was loosing his marbles. He could very well molest a kid while everyone was suspecting, it wouldn’t have been out of his normal abnormal behaviour, lol.

I wonder why Jackson didn’t use his interview with Ed Bradley as an opportunity to say that the timeline of the accusations was prepostorous and that no one would molest a child after being suspected of being a pedophile. It was his once chance to say it (that, and in courtroom, but he refused to take the stand), and he didn’t make use of it. All he said that he would slit his wrists before he would hurt a child, which doesn’t really mean anything and isn’t a denial of having molested Gavin, if you really look into it.

Neely

Hey Kat, I have heard you mention the allegations that Jackson leveled on the PD when he was arrested. Literally the only thing I’ve ever seen about that was Jackson himself on the Ed Bradley interview you mentioned. I always wondered if there was any truth to that claim, because honestly he seemed pretty whiny, for lack of a better term. 🙂
Would you mind sharing more about that? Or where I can look deeper into it? Or anyone really. Just interested to know what really happened in that jailhouse.

Pea

Neely, the Attorney General investigated Jacko’s claims of police brutality and found them to be without any merit. Here’s some links to a news story and some documents about the situation — the cops were vindicated:

It was pretty amusing for the Defense to say that Jacko was “a vegetarian who eats no meat, fish, or fowl” (paraphrase). Not true: it came out in court that he loves fried chicken and Subway sandwiches!

They then say he was thin, frail, and bruises easily. How does that help Jacko’s case? If he bruises easily, then even the gentlest handling could disrupt the delicate lily’s blood vessels.

The whole claim was ridiculous. 🙂

Neely

Thanks Pea. You always have the goods. 🙂
Mesereau was clearly reaching on this one. I did think the bruising and swelling looked authentic, although it really did match his blush in the one pic, lol. Maybe he swiped a bit on for good measure. But, like Janet Arvizo, perhaps the bruises are authentic, but, who knows where they came from. It’s hard to believe any law enforcement personnel would mishandle the “king of pop”. If for no other reason than the knowledge of his power. For a very brief moment I entertained the idea that since people generally loathe child molesters, maybe he did get the royal mistreatment. It just isn’t really believable though.

You mentioned his strict diet. So weird because so many people seem to report different things. I have heard, I’d guess, at least a couple other sources say he was vegetarian, then the buckets of KFC somehow appeared in other convos. Dude, pick a struggle, lol! Whichever is true, he sure wasn’t eating much of either one. I wonder if people assumed he was “frail” because he was so thin. In pics during the trial he did look frail I suppose. But, skinny doesn’t necessarily mean frail, imho.

Sidebar – I caved and spent some money on my new interest. I never thought I’d buy Frank Cascios book, but it was on audio so I caved. Grrrrr. He absolutely is loyal to Michael, but, I agree with an earlier statement here that it came across a little perverse, or maybe bromantic is more accurate. I didn’t have much regard for Frank to begin with, albeit without much knowledge of him. I just thought he was a starstruck oddball, based on what little knowledge I had. Now, I conclude the same. 🙂

Kat

It’s true, he lied about that. An investigation was launched and it was proven that what he claimed had happened had no foundation whasoever. I suspect that the Santa Barbara police were simple annoyed and insulted by MJs crazy assertations of having had his shoulder dislocated and being thrown into a restroom with feces everywhere, so they wanted to clear their name by officially investigating it, even though I don’t think many people believed Jackson when he said he was a victim of police brutality, it’s ludicrous to think that someone would treat the most famous person on the planet like that. 😉

I don’t know why he lied, but Ron Zonen said it was consciousness of guilt on Jackson’s part. Anyhow, it’s a good example of MJ being a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He was someone who played the part of the victim while victimizing others, including those who hadn’t done anything wrong, like the police who acted beyond exemplary with him.

NilsH

I think he wanted to take the whole thing to a next level by making it a race issue, it should be a ‘racist cops mistreat famous black man’ case, maybe some new LA riots. But even his own soulbrothers let him down I guess. He started playing the race card in 2001 when Sony ‘failed to market him properly’.

Me – “Mike my old buddy old pal, you’re making the same mistake… It’s in no way analogous with…”

MJ – “What’s wrong with sharing A LOVE?”

Me – “Forget it.”

*throws up hands and walks out*

*has to come back because I’ve left my car keys*

*sees Michael sharing A LOVE*

*Is disgusted*

ShawntayUStay

You are too funny! LOL

That Jack the Ripper excuse is an interesting one because it is so disconnected from the issue at hand. I think in MJ’s mind, the worst you could do was take someone’s life, and if he wasn’t doing that during all those one-on-one sleepovers, he was in the clear.

He says Jack the Ripper first and often, but did at one point say “pedophile”. One wonders why he couldn’t just say child molester or pedophile exclusively, instead? Because I think he couldn’t bring himself to condemn his own actions, which is quite common for people to do in general. If you condemn your own behavior, you condemn yourself, say that you’re bad. People don’t like to do it so they make excuses. MJ was using the Jack the Ripper as an excuse.

Mahoney

Very true, this turn of phrase could be seen as…

A. naive and innocent.

or

B. A way of manipulatively deflecting the argument somewhat… A “don’t think of a white horse” if you will. It actually subtly shifts the blame/onus onto a non-related/irrelevant matter without calling too much attention to itself. Kinda smart and sneaky if you think about it.

“the issue being his hands, LOL” – ha, ha… So sad and sick, but true!

Kat

Heh, I think that in his mind MJ didn’t think that what he was doing was so horrible and heinous. Jack the Ripper – he violently killed and mutilated multiple women, but Michael Jackson? He only slept in one bed with boys (and engaged in non-violent sex acts with them, but that part he chose to keep to himself). A lot of molesters try to rationalize and justify their actions in that way. They prefer to think that just because no violence is used and no physical harm is done, the child isn’t damaged. We of course know that sexual abuse does psychologically wound children, but people who cause that damage like to think that it doesn’t. It’s what allows them to continue and to repeat their actions again and again.

ShawntayUStay

Hehe, I don’t think there’s a huge emotional reason you can ‘get’ me on this

I wasn’t trying to “get” you, whatever that means, LOL, but I’m not sure there isn’t some emotional investment. After all, you did say “fuck Tom Mesereau” directly and indirectly multiple times. That’s pretty emotional, LOL, when he was simply doing his job (and did a damned fine one at that)! I’d wager the emotional reason more has to do with being “right” than any Arvizo love (and they sure are a lovable bunch, esp that Janet!).

nor do I follow blindly whatever the presecution[sic] says

But you do repeat it, though. LOL.

Most people don’t know what a ‘nice guy’ molester is, nor a ‘compliant victim’, and according to Ken Lanning these are elementary terms if you’re going to understand cases like this.

Are you saying that because the jurors acquitted MJ they must’ve not knew what a nice guy molester and compliant victim are? I’m not sure if those terms would’ve saved the already sinking ship because the problem wasn’t based on the inconsistencies and denials of a well-groomed victim, the problem was the specific facts surrounding all of the allegations, the “facts” that “supported” the 14 count indictment. The changing timeline; the changing number of times MJ molested Gavin; the general problem of having no other corroboration besides each other for the core acts; the when and how the Arvizos came forward with the molestation story (Was if before Feldman? After Feldman but before Katz? After Katz but before he talked to the boys?); etc. Even if those terms were needed, the prosecution laid no foundation for the jurors to understand them. Why not? They didn’t think it was necessary, either. A case should be judged on the particular facts, not a general assumption/statistic that may not hold true in all situations when the variables are changed. A statistic can help further explain a fact, but it shouldn’t be used in place of one.

It also seems like you think the jury aligns with your own view, just because it has the same conclusion, and I don’t think that is correct. If we exclude Hultman, Parker, Calls and arguably Rodriguez most of the jurors seemed to think Jackson was an innocent man in general, meaning not even a pedophile.

I never said that or thought it. Whatever some of them think about MJ in general isn’t my concern. Perhaps some of them think he was innocent and this case was a shining example of the dangers of too much giving to unsavory, undeserving people, and the dangers of having a lot of money. Perhaps they do think that the other accusations are cut from the same cloth, but objectively speaking, can you blame them? They were presented with a mother that was definitely crazy and likely sociopathic, witnesses that sold salacious stories to tabloids and were sued for stealing from MJ, grown special friends that confidently denied ever being abused despite rumors to the contrary, a former victim who was strangely and unfortunately combative on the stand who came off “like Janet Arvizo” to the jurors, among other things. If you didn’t know the backstory of Michael jackson’s “boy problem”, it’s easy to think it was all BS, and the prosecution had a very hard time getting beyond the burden of proof. Even Ray Chandler agreed! So I would cut them a little slack.

Is Ellie Cook really someone you want to quote? She’s ridiculous and very, very thirsty for attention. I’d take anything she says with a grain of salt.

There’s also a lot of evidence and testimony in support of the conspiracy charges, but those were for whatever reasons acquitted too.

They likely acquitted because the core conspiracy allegations made by the Arvizos were about everyone but MJ! There was little to connect him to anything. Again one wonders why Sneddon didn’t want to indict the Germans, Frank, and Vinnie.

As for the prior bad acts, the prosecution needed to pad the thin, unbelievable story that was the Arvizos’ allegations. If they presented unimpeachable facts of MJ molesting multiple special friends, it would make them forget the silly Arvizos because no person would let a pedophile get off on one case when he’d committed crimes in many others. They knew Janet was a problem and that she was off-putting, crazy, and unreliable. In my opinion, the prior bad acts portion was Sneddon’s attempt at redemption. He wasn’t called “Mad Dog” for nothing! He was pissed off that someone he strongly believed was a pedophile got off in 1994 by paying the victim millions — that’s why he and Garcetti had the law changed to prevent child sex abuse settlement payment schedules from spanning longer than 1 year. Sneddon may have initially believed the Arvizos but I think he smelled BS eventually but wasn’t going to let MJ go free when he was so close within reach. You could tell by Sneddon’s reaction to the verdict that he was okay with it, despite using questionable tactics and millions of dollars to collect evidence in this case.

This is the same reason why I think he wanted to get Jordie’s description and the accompanying gentalia photographs admitted at the end of the trial — he knew nothing from the Arvizos could convict MJ but Jordie Chandler could.

As for Gavin not being a special friend, I’m sort of on the fence I admit. I need to research it more I suppose….The situation or the claims were only within the days they were trapped at Neverland anyway, and you seem to believe Jason Francia, and he was not your typical special friend either.

I think you should because you’ll see that MJ does have a very defined pattern with the boys who’ve been rumored to be victims. He also has a definite pattern for boys that he wasn’t interested in or he grew tired of. They’re distinct. As for Jason Francia, the only thing he has going for him in terms of believability is that he was paid money, like Jordie. I’m simply making an assumption by viewing these two as similar as a result of the settlements. If he didn’t get paid, I’d think he was probably lying as well, or rather, him being somewhat slow, he was forced by police to “remember it right”. He was terrible on the stand.

Andreas

I’m not sure there isn’t some emotional investment. After all, you did say “fuck Tom Mesereau” directly and indirectly multiple times. That’s pretty emotional, LOL, when he was simply doing his job (and did a damned fine one at that)! I’d wager the emotional reason more has to do with being “right”

Phew, you sure go a bit aggressive in these debates. Well, it would all too easy easy to say the same back, Shawntay. That you are too proud to see that your story doesn’t make much sense, and that you’ve painted yourself into a corner by defending your position. So this could probably go both ways. Its an argument that is much more suitable with you though, as you(and Pea) really are experts on Jackson. In general you know much more about these things than me. Much much more. You’ve been researching him quite closely for 5-6 years or so, right? You actually have a reason to have an ego about this. You guys probably are a likely candidate to write the ‘ultimate book’ about Jackson on these topics one day, so its very quite understandable you would have difficulties accepting you could have taken a wrong turn somewhere, since you’ve ran with this “interesting theory” for so long now. I give you credit for thinking outside the box, and an interesting proposition worth looking into, but I think in this case you’re not necessarily right. I stand by that.

I’ve just been reading about this for perhaps a little over a year, and very on and off at that. I don’t have that much pride in this. I find it interesting, and I am reading about the case here and there, but I’m honestly just trying to figure out what is true. I don’t mind being wrong if that is the case, but I’ve yet to see anything that really makes me pause from what you’ve said. Most of it is very similiar to stuff that didn’t impress me too much on fan sites. The thing that has had me pause the most about anything you’ve said in this particular case, if you’re curious, is ironically that it comes from you.. and how fiercly adamant you are about this too. That truly puzzles me.

To me you draw a bit of a cartoony supervillain picture of Janet Arvizo, and much more than I ever did with Tom Mesereau. I basically just said he caters to power, and he clearly does. He defends Bill Cosby and he even defends Jerry Sandusky, and so on. I find that a bit sketchy and a bit suspicious. It doesn’t help MJ’s case if he’s ready to ‘believe’ basically that any rich celebrity that is charged with multiple sexcrimes is innocent. It makes Jackson’s case weaker by association, and even some fans are frustrated with this I’ve seen. It would be far more powerful if he said the Sandusky case was an obvious guilty, but could not be compared to the Jackson case, or something to that effect. Actually, if I ever heard Mesereau defend one single victim coming forward, I’d cut him some slack, but he evidently don’t. If you don’t see it the same way, then fine. I used to respect Mesereau, quite a lot actually, back when I only knew him from the MJ case, he seemed like a decent person at first, but I just don’t as much anymore after getting to know more about him. Sorry.

You don’t think your version of Janet Arvizo is a bit over the place though? Once you said she was stupid, but now you’ve made a turnaround and say she’s smarter than it seems, or even “street smart”… probably because it suits your story more that she’s not stupid, I assume? She needs to be smart to be a masterschemer of the magnitutes that is demanded of her, right? So now Janet Arvizo conveniently went from dumb to smart. You seems to build much of your argument based on her prior history without any real evidence in the present one. Its pure speculating if she has coached Gavin or Star in this case, and purely speculating she was after Jackson’s money at any point, when there is nothing to really back that up(more of the opposite, as far I can see), but that seems to be the biggest argument… Janet. You use hearsay that Davellin has some disdain for her mother as argument against Janet. A teenage 16 year old girl having some disdain for her own mother I thought was quite common? How is that proof of anything? Not least since the whole family allegedly lived in a big room at the time, with no seperate rooms for the kids. Many people witnessed they were decent people too, and asked for no money. Even defense witness Azja Pryor testified to that. Janet only wanted good wishes and prayers for Gavin, and even refused to take money. And Pryor said they were nice decent people. Chris Tucker, before the allegations, said enthusiastically he “loved” Gavin on a TV show. So, the Arvizos had mixed reviews.

Even if I’d grant you that Janet was some kind of demon-ish woman capable of limitless heinous things it still is quite difficult to see how she could control everything that happened within the case. I just don’t see a way it could have happened, or where to put the donkey’s tail. In my view she was a woman who barely could control her own moodswings, her thoughts and sentences on stand, let alone other people, so I’m personally dumbfounded how it would potentially go about. Its asking a lot of her to be this grand schemer with a grand plan. A lot of what she says about the conspiracy claims has a lot of corraborating evidence and witnesses too, so how does that fit in? Security guard Brian Barron testified there were posters of Gavin to not let him leave Neverland, and in his 7 years as a guard there he had never seen this happen to another kid. Its not exactly Occams razor we’re working with here if it was a plotted scheme. I have problems even picturing a bad story to how she could have pulled that off.. It just doesn’t work as a narrative. In my opinion Mesereau barely bothered with a narrative, beyond the simplistic “accuse Michael = wanting money”, which he used on everybody.

Sneddon and Zonen actually visited, and in Zonen’s case still visits and has contact with the Arvizos long after the case. So that probably excludes the possibility that they felt tricked by them and ended up with eggs on their faces, or whatever is the suggestion. Sneddon said he and everybody that had anything to do with the case up to the case, believed Gavin, and that was never any doubt.

I don’t know how I repeat what the persecution says, because I honestly don’t know their opinion is on everything, but seeing as I believe the Arvizos, and they did believe the Arvizos, it probably is quite similiar. Is that really so odd? Not a damning argument by any stretch, and even if I was just copy pasting what they said you still can’t dismiss the arguments just by that. I base most of what I say on the testimonies, and whatever else I’ve read elsewhere. I’m not sure why I should be apologetic for having a similiar opinion to someone else who believes the Arvizos story.. (Are you following Meserau and Sanger blindly by the way then? Is this some kind of awkward projection on your part? Hm.)

As far as I understand it the molestation allegations by Gavin wasn’t mentioned until Larry Feldman was put on the case. Feldman sent the whole family to Stan Katz to have them examined for all sorts of possible trauma, abuse symptoms or anything that could back up their story. Feldman suspected possible molestation, but I think he says in his testimony that he never talked to Gavin directly about it(he talked to Katz about it later on though). It was perhaps his own suspicion, and a thing he perhaps wanted Katz to examine. Gavin had two meetings with Stan Katz. On the last one on 11th June 2003, Gavin revealed it, and it has to have been believable to Katz, because the very next day after Katz reported it. Allegedly Gavin just cried and got very upset when he was asked by Katz and didn’t go into detail. Then Gavin revealed to Paul Zelis at the police in Santa Barbara further the details of the molestation. Zelis also testified in 2005, if you haven’t read his testimony. If you see any incoherent parts of the story, please point them out.

Are you saying that because the jurors acquitted MJ they must’ve not knew what a nice guy molester and compliant victim are?

I don’t think there was one single reason they acquitted him, but I do think most people don’t know much about child abuse, and that its a factor if a jury is going to judge it. If they’re not unfortunate enough to have experienced it or know someone who has been, how could they? I think there’s a lot of misconceptions. People usually don’t know (or want to think about) if kids can feel sexual pleasure, for example, that they sometimes becomes compliant and can defend their molesters, even on stand… News to most people, and people sometimes picture stereotype pedophiles as creepy guys on corners, or in cars, trying to get children in the car by tempting with candy. This is usually not what happens, but its not intuitive information to know though.

On reddit there’s quite a lot of people who thinks child molestastion is the same as rape. “Did Jackson rape kids?” they ask. And they consider he couldn’t be raping kids, because he doesn’t strike them as a rapist kind of guy. And they are in a way right, because Jackson didn’t rape kids in that sense. It takes some knowledge to understand how these things usually happens and go about. This was sometimes used as an argument within the case too. Not sure if it was by the jury, probably not, but there was this argument by commentators that some people didn’t think Gavin seemed didn’t seem like the “victim type”. Too sassy, at least while cross examined by Mesereau. Not a victim type (allegedly), and by that implying Jackson forced himself on him, much like rape. It wasn’t the claim by Gavin though. You can’t look at it like who would win in a fist fight by Gavin or Michael. We know Jackson used grooming and brainwashing, which is far more typical in general too, and in Gavin’s alleged case, alcohol was part of it. Most video evidence between Gavin and Michael shows Gavin being quite submissive to Michael. Its not about physical strength.

But as a whole, yes, I do find experts on the field like Stan Katz and Jim Clemense to be more credible than a group of people collected to be jury where some of them even dozed off under several of the testimonies. Like it or not, the experts on child molestation seem to believe Gavin. Are you saying they’re also just repeating what the persection says? Or do you have something else up your sleeves to dismiss their opinions? 🙂

Is Ellie Cook really someone you want to quote? She’s ridiculous and very, very thirsty for attention. I’d take anything she says with a grain of salt.

You get that because of her quote “Don’t snap at me lady”? Or the discontinued book deal? Is that attention whoring, and enough to discredit her? Harsh. She seemed normal to me, really. I’ve met several old women that reminds me of her. Her story in this case is corraborated by others sources too. There seemingly were a few Jackson fans inside the jury. Tammy Bolton admitted herself she was starstruck with Jackson(plus when M. Culkin came into court she was reportedly seen a bit showingly ecstatic) but she claimed she after a while saw him as a normal person (eventually). I can follow you a bit about Ellie being strong armed into being voted not guilty, as I remember you had problems believing that. There might have been tension and pressure within the group, but I think if she felt confident enough to vote guilty she would have. Perhaps she’s putting too much of the blame on peerpressure to vote NG, but I believe it could have played a part. Not sure why she would lie about that anyway? She seems believable to me. 4 of the jurors, 1/3 of the group in other words, has said they thought Jackson was guilty of molesting of Gavin, but they didn’t see evidence “beyond a reasonable doubt”. Two of the jurors came out not much later saying they regretted acquitting him. So in a sense it could be seen as a hung jury, at least, if you’re really, really generous. (Kind of…)

You could tell by Sneddon’s reaction to the verdict that he was okay with it

I think jhe just said he wasn’t going to quarrel with a jury, and that he respected the system. Still, he said in another context the prosecution felt the celebrity factor was a important factor on the verdict, but saying(perhaps to be a bit humble/balanced) they could be looking at the wrong things. (It was shortly after the NG verdict) In that clip he seems like he’s almost about to cry, the way I remember it. Can’t blame him for being a bit emotional though, they worked hard on the case for a long time after all. It was a big lose to him, I think. I think he really believed Gavin was telling the truth. Thats what he said too, and considering the later contact Sneddon and Zonen had with the family, it obviously indicates they continued to believe them. If they didn’t they probably would have cut contact with them quite briefly after the case.

He also has a definite pattern for boys that he wasn’t interested in or he grew tired of. They’re distinct.

Okay, this is one of your more interesting points in a while, because I don’t know much about these types of boys, or examples of boys MJ grew tired of, or wasn’t interested in.

Damien Stern was one, I suppose? Could you elaborate, and perhaps explain how Gavin fits in with these? I’m confused about Stern though, because if his story is true, Jackson befriended families with sons that he wasn’t attracted to. How does that make sense?

The way I see it many of his alleged victims seems a bit different from each other. Safechuck, Robson, Lewis, Jordy, Bhatti and Barnes does not strike me as exceptionally similiar, going by look and personality, or what have you. Gavin at least had some latino in him, as with Jordy, and Feldman said he thought they looked very similiar, and he interacted a lot with both in person.(Not many others did) Jordy was also described as a bit rude and unbehaved by maids at Neverland, and both June and Evan mentioned he became a lot more rude to them and difficult after starting to hang with Jackson.

Pea

I don’t believe I’ve ever said Janet Arvizo was “stupid”, as in retarded or substantially lower than average IQ. (If I have, I rescind the statement.) I haven’t gotten through her testimony — actually, I’ve only just begun the days of her on the witness box — but what was immediately evident to me was how not stupid she was. I had several expectations of her abilities because of the media’s characterizations of her intellect, and how they called her simple and uneducated. Even Mesereau said she wasn’t bright — though Mez is an unfair comparison because he’s Harvard-educated and obviously has a high IQ. No, I don’t think Janet is stupid at all, although that isn’t to say she’s a savant. She’s “street smart” definitely — i.e. perfectly intellectually capable of finding a way to survive, sometimes novelly or criminally, in difficult situations. “Street smarts” are a requisite in the ghetto but not at all common among people of higher classes — I’m not surprised the White Media labeled her as “simple” to make her more sympathetic and, yes, “understandable”.

Do you think she’s stupid or simple? I don’t, and because I don’t, I find no contradictions in my thoughts about her abilities. (She may have been quite successful if she hadn’t been mired in motherhood at such an early age.) In fact, Janet is no different than women who get men to fund their lifestyles, except she isn’t using her body but flattery and kiss-assery. If that was some measure of intellect, she’d be in at least the 90th percentile…. And it certainly didn’t hurt that her children were likable.

The relevant question here is whether Janet Arvizo is capable of manufacturing a story about being falsely imprisoned and suggesting her children to say that they were molested (yes, “they” because Star did say he was molested before mysteriously rescinding the allegation). Based on my impression of Janet, absolutely. But does she really need to be conventionally “smart” to do that? No, she doesn’t. And was her story even complex and flawless? No, not at all. If we’re arguing that they lied, then she simply changed the context of normal events (as Stan Katz said liars will do) — the Brazil vacation was suddenly an effort to get rid of them permanently; her statements on the rebuttal tape were scripted; Gavin not being able to take that medical test because a blood sample was also needed turned into Jacko’s people purposely “spilling” his urine so that there wasn’t enough…. Her own crazy then added impossibly ridiculous stuff about head-licking (which never happened), hot air balloons, and no clocks, etc. Janet is no supervillain, just an opportunist.

Like I said, this wasn’t a complex story. It contained fact peppered liberally with fiction. And its problems were probably what sunk the ship.

“so its very quite understandable you would have difficulties accepting you could have taken a wrong turn somewhere, since you’ve ran with this “interesting theory” for so long now.”

I’ll let Shawntay speak for herself, but since you lumped me into your reply to her, I’ll say that I certainly haven’t held this present dark suspicion about the Arvizo family for long — I’d say only for a few months in the years I’ve researched Michael Jackson! In the past, I believed Gavin more reflexively because I accepted that Jacko was attracted to boys. However, I was less dedicated because I knew that Jacko was acquitted and that I knew little about the case. I’d say I still don’t know everything about the case, but, in being meticulous, I’m in no rush to process this puzzle. There’s 1000s of pages of testimony and 100s of documents, but I’m willing.

For me, I am hung up on these inconsistencies. Why so many, and why do I have to believe the Arvizos, as a “hater” in good standing would, in spite of them? I’m also suspicious of Arvizo defenders’ habit of ignoring Janet and Star and focusing solely on Gavin. As Shawntay said before, and rightly: if the family members are there to corroborate each other’s accounts, ALL of them need to be believable for the ENTIRE tale of woe to be accepted as true — it seems unlikely that Gavin’s real claim was sabotaged by lies (although not impossible). Finally, in acknowledging the fabrications made, I wonder what was the purpose. For instance, why say that the rebuttal tape was totally scripted? The most reasonable explanation is that Janet knew how it looked to have done that interview while claiming that Jacko was “the devil” who imprisoned the family and molested its boys.

So, there’s tons of reasons to be suspicious of the Arvizos. But I can change at any moment upon new information, and you’ve clearly read much more testimony than me. I admit, though, that it’ll be difficult to overlook the stuff that makes me doubt them now.

Pea

About Jordie Chandler, firstly, he’s not Latino — his father is Jewish and his mother is black and Chinese. Secondly, I think we really need to not repeat Ron Zonen’s claim that Gavin Arvizo and Jordie looked similar; that was a disingenuous reach, in my opinion. Jordie was a cute, fine-boned boy with brown skin who looked much younger than 13; Gavin was man-sized at 13 and, let’s face it, much uglier than any of the boys Jacko liked (except maybe Corey Feldman, who’s always been funny-looking). Jacko’s boys were adorable; Gavin was not and looks even worse today.

Third, Jordie and Gavin were not behaviorally similar. Jordie was a good kid with good grades. He may have gotten mouthy and played hard at Neverland, but he wasn’t a bad kid by any stretch. Gavin was arrogant, devious, destructive, a thief, and, in my opinion, suffered from a conduct disorder — he had problems with authority and rebelled countless times at school because he thought he was better than his teachers (I’m not totally condemning him for that because teachers in urban schools tend to be the worst, but he should know his place). He even allegedly accused his mother of abuse as a young kid. I think the boy was a product of his home, the son of two obvious sociopaths. But Gavin was intelligent so, thankfully, he grew out of it.

Those boys aren’t similar in any way. In fact, Gavin’s persona is one of the reasons I question his allegation. If he said he was teased for being “booty-busted” by MJ after the Bashir documentary came out, why would he let Jacko molest him “5-7 times”? He seemed like a kid who’d punch Jacko right in his prosthetic nose! 🙂

ShawntayUStay

I wasn’t trying to be aggressive. I never am (I don’t even leave comments generally, just on MJFacts, because people always get angry in internet discussions). I was just being cheeky with you, LOL, no hard feelings :-). In actuality, I asked you the reason why you believe the Arvizos despite the verdict because you seem to get aggressive IMO after a couple of exchanges. So I just wondered about it.

I also should mention that even though I’ve been looking into MJ since 2009, I’ve only recently, since about October of last year (off and on), been looking into this case. I have no stake in it because from my perspective, if he did molest Gavin, it would just further support the idea that he was the pedo that we’ve all suspected; if he didn’t molest Gavin, Gavin would be one of the “fake victims” like Bartucci and Kapon who don’t matter anyway because they don’t have any similarity to the real special friends/victims. In the same way as Pea, I used to think maybe he did it but the verdict gave me pause, so I’d have to look more deeply at the evidence than just assume MJ was guilty because he was a pedo. But the case was messy and time-consuming so I didn’t bother to look into it. I still haven’t read everything because I wanted to start from the first iteration and go from there. Having read the Statement of Probable Cause, the boys’ grand jury and court testimonies, I was left very unconvinced and disappointed. I wanted to believe but I’m not buying it. It could change but whose left? Janet Arvizo? It doesn’t look good for them, IMO.

I’ll answer the rest later, but:

I don’t know how I repeat what the persecution says, because I honestly don’t know their opinion is on everything, but seeing as I believe the Arvizos, and they did believe the Arvizos, it probably is quite similiar. Is that really so odd?

It’s absolutely not odd. My point is in reference to what I referred to earlier is “retrying the case” with the same facts, evidence and arguments — the same stuff that didn’t convicted MJ in the first place. My opinion was that there is little point repeating it because it would be essentially hoping for a different outcome when you use an identical narrative. I wasn’t convinced by either boys’ testimony so it’s hard for me to hear it repeated as fact. What else it there that I’ve perhaps missed that you are seeing that isn’t in the prosecution’s narrative or the family’s narrative? That’s what I’d like to know, and maybe I’d understand why you (and others) can believe them despite their lies and inconsistencies.

I’ve yet to see anything that really makes me pause from what you’ve said. Most of it is very similiar to stuff that didn’t impress me too much on fan sites.

Well in the same vein as you, if I disbelieve the Arvizos is it really odd that I’d sound similar to a fan? Not really. But for the record, I don’t read fan sites. Nor do I “follow” Tom Mesereau, LOL. I think MJ was a pedophile, why would I?! I won’t lie and say I don’t have respect for him being an American White man who is dedicated to racial, ethnic and gender diversity; that will always get my respect. Always. But I don’t know him personally so I won’t venture out and attack him personally. But he’s wrong about MJ in general, although, if he only saw the “nice” side of MJ, I can’t fault him for his perceptions. Many people have the same opinion about Michael Jackson as he does because they, too, only saw the nice side. It’s probably really hard to accept the truth about someone who presented as so nice and humble.

When I initially thought of MJ’s attraction to Gavin it didn’t really make sense because it was so different to his other boys, but in my mind I was thinking of early 1990’s MJ. By that I mean at that time he was at the top of his game with a huge fan base of children and adults alike. Although many people viewed it as weird that he was so close to young boys boys, he was also viewed as “innocent” and “asexual” by nearly everyone (apart from those “in the know”).

After the Chandler allegations his star began to wane and there were fewer parents willing to allow their sons to spend time with MJ, not only because they may have been suspicious of MJ’s motives with boys, but also the social opprobrium if they allowed it. I would call MJ’s time from Emmanuel Lewis in 1982 through to Jordan Chandler in 1993 his (from his perspective) “golden years” where he had a large number of boys he could attempt to funnel into his pipeline.

The boys after 1993 – Wade, Brett, the Cascio Boys were groomed pre-1993 and lasted until around 1996. After that he had a few boys he spent time with – Sean Lennon and Juju Elatab for instance – but there wasn’t the intensity there that he had in his golden years. Omer Bhatti was the last special friend he had.

In the early 00’s he wasn’t getting many new fans in the age group he preferred, money problems meant he had less opportunities to dazzle parents and their sons with large gifts and trips abroad, his age was catching up to him (we didn’t hear about food or water balloon fights in later years for instance) and his increased drug and alcohol use all made him less appealing for his target, boys.

So I think the 2003 MJ was very different to the 1993 MJ. Whereas before he could have gotten any boy he wanted, by 2003 he was left with a much smaller pool of potential boy friends. I would suggest it had shrunk dramatically and he’d “gone without” for a period of time, making Gavin vulnerable.

This is my view, and I’m sure some may disagree with it, but I don’t think MJ’s earlier and later boy hunting periods are comparable.

Kat

Jackson’s behaviour with Gavin followed a very similar design to what he had going with other boys, imo.

Gavin was invited to spend the night in MJ’s bedroom the first time when he came to Neverland. He was called Applehead and Doo Doo by Jackson. There wasn’t any kid that was given those nicknames that Jackson wasn’t attracted to. Jackson gave Gavin a computer and a Play Station, and lavished the entire family with extravagant gifts. Gavin was also given porn and alcohol by MJ, and he used the same manipulative language with Gavin as he had with Jordie – if you love me, then you’ll sleep on the bed, et cetera. And what about the moment in Living with Michael Jackson when Gavin and Jackson were holding hands like two lovebirds and Gavin’s head was on MJs shoulder?? I don’t know how with all this it can be denied that MJ was sexually interested in him. And it’s very similar to how he was with Jordan, Wade, and others.

Gavin wasn’t a carbon copy of Jordie Chandler, but in other respects he met all the criteria for the kind of kid that Jackson would victimize. MJ might have placed kids into the categories of ‘photo-ops’ and ‘molestable’, but photo-ops by and large happened in actual hospitals with sick kids. The kids that weren’t invited into his bedroom and bed on other occassions…

Personally I think it can be clearly seen that Gavin wasn’t just a photo opportunity for Jackson. It seems illogical to me that the Arvizos pursued Jackson themselves. He didn’t have people around him that he didn’t want to have. He could have told his security people to get rid of them, if he wanted to. He did get rid of all the girl children that were no interest for him and send the parents away so that he could have alone time with their sons, didn’t he? Suddenly with Arvizos Jackson becomes this meek, easily manipulated and deceived guy, which we all know he wasn’t. He was always the main manipulator who had elaborate schemes for getting what he wanted.

ShawntayUStay

And what about the moment in Living with Michael Jackson when Gavin and Jackson were holding hands like two lovebirds and Gavin’s head was on MJs shoulder??

Gavin said on the stand at both the grand jury and in 2005 that all that “cooing” and “petting” was acting. MJ said the Bashir doc was his chance to “act” and they both agreed that he should act as if MJ was his father like savior who cured him of cancer. It wasn’t anything real so it couldn’t be the result of grooming or intimacy. MJ left right after the filming and never talked to them until the following year when the shit hit the fan.

Kat

Gavin was definitely a victim, and I have compassion for him, because of everything he’s been through in his life. But then again, I sort of see the entire Arvizo family as victims rather than villians, even though the defense during the trial tried their best to portray them that way, but my personal judgement is that they weren’t that bad a family.

I don’t think this is an argument either, I just don’t think we will agree about the Arvizos, because we’re looking at things differently. I don’t know if Janet and the rest of the family were truthful at the JC Penney case, as I’ve heard so many versions of what happened there. I know that they did win the case and were paid compensation money. The jurors in that civil trial believed that she had been physically and sexually assaulted by the guards. I don’t know why you’re so certain that that they fabricated everything in both trials, even though in one the verdict was guilty and in the other one – not guilty.

If she lied before, then of course she can lie again in a different situation. But with Gavin’s child molestation trial I think it’s highly unlikely that she did. First of all, because child sexual abuse has little to do with money. If Janet coached her kids to tell false stories to Stan Katz, didn’t she realize that he would inform the authorities and a criminal investigation would be launched? Why go through a criminal trial if she could have made a civil case against MJ for matters that could be settled for money in a civil court? I also haven’t seen any real proof that Janet knew about the pornography and masturbation before Tom Sneddon told her in a hotel’s lobby where they met. Reading Stan Katz conversation didn’t convince me that she knew anything about that.

And frankly, I think it’s ironic to say that Janet or any of the accusers had no credibility, if we have Michael Jackson on the other side. What kind of credibility did he have? Janet might have broken the law by cheating the welfare system, but Jackson broke the law his whole life by molesting one kid after another, and that’s a far worse offense. Janet could have lied about being beaten up by JC Penney guards, well, Jackson lied about being manhandled by the Santa Barbara police when taken into the station and painted fake marks on his hands too. Janet was something of a trainwreck in the courtroom, but at least she didn’t come in dressed in pajamas. I don’t know why should anyone believe him if he claims not to have molested a child. Also, Jackson never directly denied having molested Gavin. Saying ‘I would never do anything like that’ isn’t a denial.

Pea

There was no verdict in the J.C. Penney’s case; there was a settlement. As per the discussion being had the other day about the Prosecution wanting to bring in a “Battered Wife’s Syndrome” expert, it’s already been established that she lied in that case when she claimed her husband never abused her (the allegation was that David Arvizo-inflicted bruising was used to support the claim she’d been roughed up by guards). Her lying was also confirmed by Mary Holzer’s testimony.

So it is a fact that she had lied under oath. It’s not up to interpretation.

Where are you getting the information that the jurors in that case believed she’d been sexually abused? Please provide a link to testimony or a news story. Not that I’d be especially surprised — her bruising would’ve been quite “dramatic” to them already:

In her July interview, she states the allegations that the boys had been shown pornography and that Jacko had touched Star’s penis were related to her in February or March 2003. (Couldn’t have been in February because nothing happened in February, as per Gavin’s testimony — but that was likely an artifact of their original story with the Feb 7 – Mar 10 timeline.) This would jive with her comments on the stand, would it not? (Assuming she’s not lying.) When Mez asked her why there weren’t any allegations of sex abuse mentioned in the letters between Dickerman and Geragos, she claimed it was because she was saving that info for the police (even though she didn’t go to the police, but civil lawyers).

Also it is not a hard conclusion to make that she was told about the allegations when Feldman stated he conferred with the family about their options following Katz’s interviews with the boys. The notion she knew nothing isn’t supported by the facts and common sense. One wonders why Janet and the cops were so conspicuous about that particular detail, something they stupidly contradict in their own document. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but supposedly Sneddon slipped his business card underneath a hotel room the Arvizos were staying at while they were still friendly with Jacko; perhaps the claim she knew nothing was consciousness of guilt on their parts that they had been after them for months?

“I don’t know why should anyone believe him if he claims not to have molested a child.”

The question isn’t whether he molested “a” child — it’s whether he molested Gavin Arvizo. And I don’t see a problem with his indirect denial when he was unanimously acquitted of all counts after a 3 month trial with 150 witnesses and numerous pieces of evidence. It’s almost irrelevant.

Neely

I am reading the document you posted above. I find it difficult (so far) to understand how Jackson was indicted for conspiracy and kidnapping, accused of death threats, etc, but this document doesn’t say a word about Michael Jackson ever making any kind of threats himself. It was stated to have come from his ‘people’, none of whom were indicted. Baffling.

Another glaring point. The DA and the sheriffs dept. agreed to split the outstanding balance owed on the storage unit in order to view the contents. They were denied access by the owner because it was leased under Brad Miller’s name. (Implying only the owner of the unit could gain access). But, a week later Jay Jackson and Janet paid the outstanding debt and were able to gain access into the unit. I can’t really believe that the DA and sheriffs dept were denied access, but, they let some seemingly unrelated couple have access? That’s not even remotely believable. That tells me Janet had some involvement with the storage unit, and likely, as claimed by Geragos, gave permission to move the contents of her apartment. Particularly if they’d mentioned getting her a nice big home, as was suggested.

I find it really difficult to believe that Janet recalls two specific things from the flight from Miami back to LA. Jackson licked her sons head, and cans of cola. Ummmmm……huh? Are cola cans alarming? And the licking happened when everyone was asleep, yet, Star saw it too? How’s that possible while you’re asleep? Here again, Jackson would have to be a total moron to serve kids wine, even in cola cans, in front of all the people on that flight. He might be a child molester, but, I don’t believe he was THAT stupid. A physician, his own kids, and nannies were on board, as well as said victims’ own mother? And wouldn’t the flight attendant be the one serving the ‘victims’? Jeez!

Kat

Jackson’s aquittal in the case was far from a full vindication. According to poll results published in Diane Dimond’s book 48% of people asked disagreed with the verdict (approximately the same amount of people who disagreed with OJ being found not guilty) and only 30% thought that he was completely innocent and had never molested anyone. It doesn’t look like the general public agreed with the jurors.

I don’t know the details of the JC Penney case. I know that in civil trials there is a ‘liable’ or ‘not liable’ conclusion, and if the defendant is found liable they have to pay money in compensation. Janet got money from JC Penney, so how can you so confidently say that she and her kids lied about everything if they were believed and were compensated?

I read the whole statement (which was disgusting to read, BTW, because of all the details of Jackson’s and his conspirators’ actions) and I tried to see loopholes, but I don’t see any. There is no way the Arvizos made the whole thing up, especially considering the particular details that were too precise and peculiar to be fabricated. I keep thinking that they were held against her will and that Jackson molested Gavin when he had the opportunity, for me everything adds up. I will agree that there is some ambiguity about how much Janet knew, since she knew about alcohol, but didn’t think that it had been given to Gavin and Star for sexual purposes. But generally, I don’t see big contradictions. They were interviewed seperately and later their testimonies were compared to see the similarities/differences and Janet didn’t know about Gavin’s molestation until then.

There’s more in the document about MJs grooming of Gavin, Janet and Star confirmed that Jackson would call Gavin every day and they would spend hours talking.

‘She believed the focus of our investigation was the family’s having been held against their wishes at the Neverland Ranch upon their return from Miami and their escape in March. Mrs Arvizo told your Affiant she had contacted an attorney to help get their possessions back and set up contacts with law enforcement to report what had happened to them. She emphasized that she was not interested in money.’ — this seem congruent with Janet’s actions, for me at least. She contacted lawyers to get their furniture and passports back, and to do something about them being held against her will and intimidated.

And they left without trying to get any money from Jackson, so I do believe that Janet didn’t want money. It’s curious Pea, you say that James Safechuck’s story is entirely unimpeachable, even though he waited for twenty five years to reveal his victimisation and is asking for money. Gavin’s allegation came out after two months and they never asked for money. What makes Gavin’s molestation questionable, but James’ unimpechable to you?

Neely

One point about the JCP case is that Janet apparently claimed no injuries at the time, then two weeks later she produced photos of injuries. I feel like $150,000 is pennies to JCP, so they likely said, pay this woman so we can wash our hands of it.

ShawntayUStay

Wasn’t the JC Penney case settled? I didn’t think the case ever went to trial. If so, the money was probably chump change to get Janet Arvizo out of their hair. The company clearly investigated her and got mental evaluations and depositions but decided that $150,000 would be cheaper than continuing litigation.

Pea

“If Janet coached her kids to tell false stories to Stan Katz, didn’t she realize that he would inform the authorities and a criminal investigation would be launched? Why go through a criminal trial if she could have made a civil case against MJ for matters that could be settled for money in a civil court?”

It’s not hard to imagine that that fear of exposure never occurred to her. If she coached her children in the past and got a 6-figure settlement as a result, it would stand to reason that she’d believe she could do it again just as or even more effectively.

Katz confirmed Feldman’s comments that Feldman wanted someone to test the veracity of their allegations before a civil lawsuit would be filed. Feldman handed it off to the cops because he no longer wanted the case. He said on the stand (paraphrasing): “Take it, do what you want with it.”

So, it doesn’t look like Janet had much choice in the matter, does it?

Neely

I don’t really feel like the defense had to try very hard to paint Janet as a villain. She really dug her own hole by merely speaking. Mesereau later said all he had to do was ask questions, and keep her talking, that she would paint her own picture for the jury. And, she apparently did impact them, albeit negatively. When I read her testimony, I felt it was difficult to follow, as if she was perhaps even disassociating at times.

You raise some very interesting points for me to ponder. First being, did those kids help themselves to the liquor cabinet, or was it really Jackson who introduced them to his Jesus Juice. It is disturbing to me that open bottles were found in his room, but, I’m admittedly a little fuzzy on how strict the lockdown was on his private quarters. It’s been quite some time now since I read the Arvizo kids’ testimonies , but it seems like I remember them saying they had the code to his bedroom, and were allowed access when he wasn’t even there? Were the rules and boundaries so loose that it was rather easy to access his bedroom? I guess that might be unimportant since there was access to liquor in other parts of the property.

One of the hang ups for me was that Gavin was by no means an innocent young man, and he didn’t pretend to hide it, nor did other witnesses. He was not afraid to challenge authority, and he had no conscience or respect for the property of Michael Jackson, apparently. That doesn’t speak much to whether Jackson was guilty or innocent, but, it makes it entirely possible, even probable that Gavin wasn’t introduced to alcohol, masturbation, or adult pornograhy by MJ. I don’t even think I can conceive of a boy who’s 13 years old who hasn’t been VERY curious by that age and indulged by that time, in some self gratification. Perhaps alcohol is a stretch, not all kids experiment there.

Kat

Certainly, pre-teen and young teen kids are naturally curious about adult things like alcohol, and pornography, and sex… but an expert groomer like Michael Jackson was will use this curiosity to seduce them with these things and make them more molestable and lower their inhibitions, and show them that there’s nothing wrong with mutual masturbation for example, it’s entirely natural.
That is the reason why he had porn and alcohol everywhere on his propety for kids to ‘find’. It’s how seducing pedophile operate. Star and Gavin might have accessed the wine cellar and looked at pornography themselves, but they aren’t fully responsible for their actions, because they were underage. We have laws that protect children from the bad decisions that they will inevitably make, because their brains aren’t fully developed and they are incapable of making decisions that are fully adult. Michael Jackson was a forty five years old grown man. He was the responsible one. He shouldn’t have left porn and alcohol in places that could be accessed by kids.
It’s interesting Neely, you’re so ready to castigate the Arvizo kids for their behaviour and Janet for being a mess in the courtroom, but doesn’t MJs behaviour outrage you? The dude was advertising Neverland as an innocent playground for children, but in fact in was full of pornography, alcohol, and drugs. How is that responsible? How is giving alcohol to a kid with cancer a responsible, adult action?

Neely

Yes, it was terribly irresponsible for Jackson to leave porn and alcohol out for any kid to discover. Even his own kids were amidst that scene, which I find irresponsible. I myself would not make it so easy for a child to indulge. Am I outraged? Not really. I find that people in general are irresponsible with things like guns in their own homes. I would not take that risk either. The liquor cabinet I raided as a 14 year old was in the dining room, open to anyone. It wasn’t even halfway private, such as the bedroom. I am not outraged by that, I feel it was just poor judgement on my friend’s parents. Cigarettes were constantly available during that time too, left lying around many homes I was in, by the parents. I have to presume to KNOW Michael Jackson’s intent, which I don’t. It was never the intent of the variety of parents I was engaged with, to lure me into their guns, cigarettes, or liquor cabinets, or car keys by leaving them accessible. They might have, and most likely did, have pornography in their bedrooms too. I didn’t go searching.

ShawntayUStay

What do you (and Andreas) think about Carol Lamir’s testimony in regards to the Arvizo family, in particular Davellin’s words about her mother? She has no reason to lie that I can see, imo, and before you (or Andreas) think to dismiss her as a “friend” of MJ’s, she was much closer to the Arvizo family than to him.

I think its important to remember that none of these witnesses are neutral machines, and depending on if they believe/support MJ or the Arvizos, they can consciously(or even unconsciously) give information supporting either side. Playing along with the defense or prosecutions line of questioning.

Meaning they also can omit information thats damning, or exagerrate the side they want to support, perhaps because they want to help out, so there’s no need for a selfish motive(if the idea is that people could only care about themselves, and can only lie if there’s a personal gain). Carol Lamir/LeMere, I notice, was never put on stand either by Jackson’s defense, which I think says something, and the things she says are majorly contradicted by people like Jamie Masada and Louise Palanker, who also knew the Arvizos. LaMere also was a girlfriend of David Arvizo, the father who got a restraining order from the family because of violent behavior, and also a stylist of MJ(and took pride in it), so I don’t think its farfetched to claim she could be a little bit biased.

Of course! She is but one person with an Arvizo anecdote, and her story should be evaluated based on its merits and credibility, just like everyone else. Her claims are interesting because they are so different from some, but that doesn’t make them invalid. Her position does gel with others’ opinion about the sketching of the mother, the behavior of the boys, Davellin’s sometimes disdain for Janet. So I guess it’s perhaps a 50-50 thing. People are complex so many opposing views of someone’s personality/behavior can all be true simultaneously (especially true for someone with a mental illness like Janet Arvizo).

Curious why Masada and Palanker are considered more reliable? Or the cops? The former has reason to believe the boys because of familiarity; the latter because they’re law enforcement and have preformed conclusions about individuals accused of particular crimes. But what’s the particular set of facts in this case say?

Andreas

Yes, Jamie Masada and Louise Palanker can probably be said to be biased too in that sense, sure, but still, they were close to the family and helped them in financial rough times when Gavin was struggling with cancer and so on, and their story builds fittingly on what lead up to the molestation charges. In my opinion they sound believable and what they say corraborates with the Arvizos overall claims. I’ve simply been trying to understand what their story even is, but when I started to get an overview it does make a lot of sense, at least to me.

Worse, as far as I see it Meserau & co never even bothered with an alternative or realistic story, its all just a huge smear campaign to make them sound unreliable and bad people isn’t it? Has there ever even been another strategy? Its a very lacking narrative too, in my opinion. Almost unbearingly lacking, because its all hearsay at best. For the most part it seems incredibly forced, and it does not explain anything about the real details of the case. Okay, so the Arvizos were money scheming an innocent man, and thats all we’re supposed to believe. Yes, what about the facts. Weren’t they invited to Neverland by Jackson? Why were they there if not? Didn’t Ann Marie Kite testify it was full panic when the Arvizos left? Didn’t a guard say there was posters at the gate not to let this family leave? Didn’t the police find the Arvizos passports and visas, just like they said? Didn’t surveillance cameras show Jacksons people were following Janet Arvizo? Didn’t staff see Star and Gavin drunk? Didn’t the forensic experts find fingerprints on Jacksons porn magazines? To me its a complete story that is backed up by a lot of facts. As for the molestation claims themselves, its obviously difficult to know, as the only witness was Star, but Gavin’s behavior afterwards match what victims go through, and he was found believable by everybody up until the trial, and the evidence also shows that Jackson and his people treated the Arvizos with every intention of controlling them.

The jury according to Paul Rodriguez put weight on Gavin sometimes sounding a little bit “rehearsed” when he testified in court, and I suppose the assumption is that perhaps the mother had coached him what to say, or something like that. Another alternative explanation was given by Jamie Masada, because Gavin back those days was very interested in stand up comedy, as he had been doing them on The Laugh Factory, and therefore was often writing down what he was going to say, and he often did that. He wrote down what he was going to say, and he rehearsed it to himself in the mirror. He might have prepared what he was going to say on certain questions, and thats all I think happened.

Kat

Just read the document… I can’t argue that Arvizos were a messed up family, and that Janet likely had some psychological problems, although I don’t think she was mentally ill, as in completely lost touch with reality. What Carol Lamir said contradicts Davellin’s testimony in court, she said that she and her mother were very close, and that David had been the abusive one in the family. She also insisted that he did molest her when she was very little; that wasn’t made up. I’ve also heard many accounts about the JC Penney lawsuit, so many that by this point I really don’t know what happened for real, but I will agree that they probably lied or embellished the truth.

But with Gavin’s molestation case, I just don’t see the motive for Janet or anyone else to lie. It seems like they went straight after putting him in jail, and not his money or any other gain. And Janet’s previous lies don’t make Star and Gavin liars by default. I think they went through a difficult time with the case, they didn’t gain anything. All that they received were unwanted attention and death threats from MJ crazies, and having the defense go through every bit of information about them. Reading what Carol had to say made me think that it doesn’t matter how screwed the family is – the kid coming from that family could still be molested. And then the family’s problems will be exaggerated to take the attention away from the molestation issue. To sum up – I haven’t changed my mind about the Arvizos yet!

Pea

“Janet likely had some psychological problems, although I don’t think she was mentally ill, as in completely lost touch with reality. “

Hmm, I don’t know about that. Janet Arvizo was schizo-affective, the differential diagnosis being that she was simultaneously suffering from schizophrenia and bipolar-disorder. This was a finding by one of the doctors interviewing her during the JC Penney case, according to the papers read by J. Randy Taraborrelli as mentioned in his book, though he notes that Janet’s psychiatrist said she wasn’t delusional. http://jetzi-mjvideo.com/books-jetzi-04/09mm/09mm649.html

However, Gavin and Star affirmed Janet’s propensity for delusions when they acknowledged that her claims of being held captive at Neverland by Jacko’s people were her perceptions, not theirs (which, of course, undermined that part of the prosecution case). And with the claim that Jacko was “the devil” and had licked Gavin’s head with a “long white tongue”, which we know likely didn’t happen on that packed plane, I think there’s a prima facie case for her being delusional.

“It seems like they went straight after putting him in jail, and not his money or any other gain.”

Well… we have to acknowledge that going to two civil lawyers isn’t exactly straight to the police, and we know, based on the timeline, that, contrary to what the cops claimed in the Statement of Probable Cause about informing Janet what the boys had alleged, Janet did know before encountering any cops that Star, at least, had made claims of molestation.

I haven’t looked at testimony in a couple of weeks, but based on reading Katz-Dickerman-Feldman, I’m still trying to untangle when exactly the molestation claims came about, especially since we know, theoretically, that Janet would’ve had ample opportunity to research Jordie Chandler and get her boys to make allegations similar to his in the interim between her evaluation by Katz and theirs two weeks later.

Kat

But… for me everything you wrote in this and other comments just gives more credence to the Arvizos. I’m sorry, but that’s just how it is for me. A lot of people find it hard to believe that Gavin was molested after the Bashir documentary shitstorm broke out, so from the perspective of the particlar family making a false accussation it seems more logical that they would say it happened before the documentary aired to make it more believable. The same goes for Gavin being unable to keep his story straight and forgetting how and when everything happened. With a false accusaton they would have made sure that all details would be rehearsed and checked so that there would be no place for inaccuracies, as their scheme could be revealed in court if it was so. I don’t know if Janet was schizophrenic or bipolar, but again, there’s just no way a crazy person could invent a false child sexual abuse allegaton that seasoned experts would find entirely credible and take it to court. Like, I don’t see that happening.

As for visiting lawyers, I’m pretty sure it’s well-established by now that they went to them to get ther stuff back, not after Jackson’s money. Believing that Janet studied the Chandler testimony to fabricate a false allegation for me would be making an assumption, and I don’t like doing that. Gavin’s and Jordie’s testimonies were very dfferent after all, I don’t know why your side insists on them being similar.

Pea

Stan Katz trial testimony was such a waste, and it was thin and boring compared to his Grand Jury testimony. But we know why: Sneddon controlled the scope of direct examination because he didn’t want Mesereau to ask Katz why he didn’t believe Jacko was a pedophile, everything that was covered with Katz at the G.J., and why he’d equivocated about Janet being interested in money with Paul Zelis:

“Whether mother’s motive is to do it for money, I can’t tell you. I mean certainly they’re….they’re kind of a poor family.”

I don’t take weigh Katz’s perceptions that strongly, to be honest. Anyone who says Michael Jackson wasn’t a pedophile isn’t credible, I’m sorry to say. He seems like one of those glib TV psychologists. But, ignoring that, he believes that children frequently don’t make up allegations, which is true, but that may cloud his judgment even when he hears more “colorful” allegations. I wonder if he still believes his McMartin clients?

Neely

Ahhhh, I think she’s the abusive one in the whole charade, not David. I feel like she was the puppeteer in all the workings of her family, and the mastermind behind all they went through, from JCP, all the way down to her claims of not wanting to go to Brazil. I believe she sits on a throne of lies, haha. This is not even taking into account the case with MJ. Just my rthoughts about her overall chatacter and where she fit in to the family dynamic….right up at the helm.

Pea

Do you really think the Arvizos were “simple”? I don’t think so at all — I actually think they were quite brilliant, albeit unconventionally so.

Gavin clearly had some kind of conduct disorder based on testimony (lots of problems with a succession to teachers while in school and running amok at Neverland), but, by what any of us can see, he was at the top of his class at his university and is now married and supposedly wants to go into law. I don’t think either boy was stupid. Janet may have not been classically intelligent — and we can’t ignore her schizoaffective disorder — but she was very “street smart”; she knew exactly what to do to pull herself out, to a degree, of the mire of a Los Angeles barrio: find benefactors.

That is clearly not a “simple” person.

To be honest, I think the media believed that because the Arvizos were Latino, poor, and had domestic instability in their home that they were somehow “stupid”, and the family was therefore painted in such a way. Which is ironic because Michael Jackson was clearly no Einstein, LOL. He couldn’t even spell. As biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli once said, if Jacko wasn’t rich and famous, he’d probably be the kind of guy sleeping on someone’s couch. 🙂

Neely

May I ask where I can view that information? I haven’t gotten through the whole trial, so I suppose that’s forthcoming. And, I’ve consumed so much information lately, that some of it is quickly slipping out the other side. :-/
Some of the reading was so monotonous to me that I felt like a juror, nodding off at times. Of course that’s when I miss the nuggets, haha.

ShawntayUStay

Here’s the document. It’s a continuation sheet prepared by the cops of their evaluation of some of the stuff seized during the November 2003 raid.

The info about the fluorescent stains — either semen or saliva as both can show under black light — on the magazines is at the end of the document. All the stains were only on 9 magazines, one was adult porn the other 8 being nudist magazines that, according to the cops, contained “nude men, women, and children”. They say those types of magazines are frequently found in the homes of pedos because they are legal to own since they show naked kids in a non sexually explicit manner. One wonders why of all the porn, they barely found MJ’s fingerprints and they only found fluorescent stains on the nudist mags.

No semen was found on the child erotica naked boy books because those had been seized in 1993 and as far as I know, no test results have ever been released about any DNA on them.

Hi Neely !! Did you just realized MJ was a pedo recently ?? I would love to know how you changed your opinion !! Thank you =)

Neely

My opinion is that nobody will ever know what went on in those rooms except the people present, and I was not one of them. I don’t want to hazard a guess about the Chandler case because I’ve done very little research there. I don’t want to discredit any child that would make a claim such as these. I also don’t want to condemn a man if his heart was pure. I am an extreme skeptic and my thoughts run the gamut from guilty to not guilty. I am just really scratching the surface of my research, and am still quite busy on the 2005 case. The jury is out on Chandler, and the others. Yet, even making that statement “the others”, is cause for sufficient concern.

Fudhux

Well at least I think womething wrong went on in those rooms =)

Fudhux

I read the interview. She is one disgusting woman. So revolting. She clearly sold her children to a pedophile. She only cares about money. She is as disgusting as Joy Robson to me .She would have never had children with Jackson if he didn’t pay her. She calls Wade Robson an opportunist but she is the biggest oppornist out there. She wanted the kids back only when Jacko didn’t pay her .

How a mother can do that is beyond me. If I was those kids I would never forgive her, like Paris did. They must be so confused too.

I wish that Jackson was put to jail with her ang all the mothers that let access to their kids. Freakshow.

Anushua

The man is dead. Can you all let him rest in peace now at least? Jesus. People just won’t leave him the fuck alone. Even death can’t stop these people from analyzing, obsessing and trashing all over him.
He gave us nothing but happiness and love through his music, give him something in return and let him be, give him his peace of mind now that he is dead.

Thanks for your comment Anushua, but I always have a problem with this argument.

Many people are also “analyzing, obsessing and praising him” so why can’t there be a balance? Are we not entitled to also discuss a popular figure and dissect his actions, the same as people who are doing it, in fan eyes, “positively”? Why do they get to do it and not us?

Just because we have a different opinion is not a good enough reason to condemn our analysis of MJ the man. The goal is to get at the truth to find out what kind of person he really was. I don’t know why anybody would disagree with that, unless the fear the truth. If MJ turns out to be not the person many people think he was it may hurt them in the short term, but honesty is always best – being honest about the people we admire and being honest about the way we feel.

Whatever happens, MJ’s music will still be there for those who like it.

Mahoney

Hey up Mjfacts,

…still seems weird calling you that, I’m gunna’ have to give you a nickname, from now on I’m calling you Miffy.

I don’t think it’s as simple as that, clearly that statement IS true in many cases… But also many (I can’t give statistical facts – Like Indiana Jones, I’m making this up as I go along) fans feel like they know the truth already, so in their eyes they’re just defending an innocent man.

Critical thinking doesn’t always come easy and in most cases tends to be something that we have to practice and practice and keep on applying… We all have blind-spots, and the MJ HERO WORSHIP is a gigantic one for many people (a great case for nature vs nurture).

That also goes for the casual fan, who isn’t aware of the myriad of alarming things about MJ and his behavior, they just simply don’t care that much… just enough to tell people to let him RIP. Would you say they were scared to know the truth?

Maybe some, but I’d wager the majority of them would be “Well.. I didn’t know that!! Shame isn’t it? How messed up can you be?… anyway, isn’t the new season of Alan Partridge on tonight?”

Or take myself as a case study, up until very recently I would defend MJ to varying degrees (Not the baby-dangling or even worse…Invincible), having been a HUGE fan earlier on in life… It was almost instinctual to do so.

I can honestly say however, I was NEVER scared of learning the truth about MJ (certainly not in recent years), I’d just never really bothered to delve deeper into the facts. My opinions of him had been cemented over many-a-year and that was that. Admittedly, you could say I was being lazy and fairly stubborn.

As I told you previously, it was introducing MJ to my child that made me want to look into the faults of the man himself (before the inevitable questions started from my daughter), and they certainly didn’t start with the child-lover angle. More to do with is drug abuse and death, it led me back from there, and as I’ve told you before… this awesome site.

Just my pennies-worth. Just trying to be as objective as I can here Miffy.

And if it makes you feel any better, you can call me Buffy.

…Or Biffy, it’s up to you 🙂

I prefer Biffy.

ShawntayUStay

“Miffy”?! Lmao X-D ! You had me cracking up!

I was once a casual fan of Eminem (in middle school) so I have a couple of his CDs still floating around in my car. Have you ever heard the song “Stan”? At first blush, you just think wow there really are people out there that are completely gaga for an artist/actor/celebrity that they’ve never met, and one’s first reaction may be a visceral one. Disgust at the irrationality, or for some, the desire to ridicule these people for being so nuts.

But as I listen to the song now, after being on this MJ community for a couple of years, it dawned on me that these people are actually very sad. Their whole life is seemingly made better by just having this person to look up to and, I guess, believe in. The hook

My tea’s gone cold I’m wondering why I got out of bed at all;
The morning rain clouds up my window and I can’t see at all;
And even if I could it’ll all be gray, but your picture on my wall;
It reminds me, that it’s not so bad, it’s not so bad.

is really so poignant, esp the last line.

I can’t imagine how damaged some of these people may be, and if loving MJ (or any artist for that matter) brings them comfort in a world that they may see as ugly, I won’t stand in their way. Seems almost cruel in some respects!

Of course, this excludes the psychopathic few that stalk and harass the alleged victims and anyone who criticizes Michael Jackson, but I think most fans in general are harmless, and can’t be bothered with learning the dark underbelly of their idol.

Kat

I’ve always liked ‘Stan’, I think it’s the best song Eminem has. Haunting and unforgettable. Recently I’ve also begun associating it with MJ fans. I kind of always thought that there are no real stans – people who would take everything their idol says literally and believe they know them and think they are different and special, beause of their fame. People who would cut themselves just because Eminem had a few songs where his alter ago Slim Shady does that. Certainly, I had never met such people.

But MJ fanatics are actual, real life stans! Ready to live in and die for MJ. I suppose in some way they are a curious study of human nature and fandom. Even in ‘Stan’ the idea that is explored is the unusual nature of an artist’s relationships with their fans. Fans listen to someone’s songs and believe that they know the person even if they’ve never met them in real life. They believe that no one understands them like the person who wrote those songs does. Fans, and people in general, also believe that famous people have to be held to different standards, that their fame makes them special. My opinion about this changed when I read Marlon Brando’s biography, not very long ago. He wrote that he couldn’t understand why people were fainting when they saw him or the exhalted letters that he got from fans. He said he used to write back saying that he was just an ordinary person, the same as everyone else, that because he was famous didn’t mean that he was special. It made me think that celebrities don’t want to be treated as though they are special in any way, because at the end of the day they’re not, they’re just well-known.

So yeah, I guess I just wanted to say that I also associate ‘Stan’ with MJ fans, maybe not in a positive way like you, because I always think of how angry, vile, offensive, and harassing they are, all because of the great love that they have for Michael Jackson, which is apparantely supposed to justify their behaviour. :/

ShawntayUStay

Kat, that is very fascinating about Marlon Brando. I agree, I think most celebrities don’t appreciate their hype for the most part. I think that is especially true for actors — they seem the least “attention seeking” of all celebrities. I mean, if you think about it, actors are lucky because they kind of fade into the background because most people don’t watch TV shows or go to the movies to see so-and-so act, they watch because of the story. The actors are merely conduits in that regard. Musicians, on the other hand, seem to be much more “prisoners” to fame/fanaticism. What would be the point of performing a concert if there is no one liking you enough to buy a ticket and be in the audience?

Eminem, I feel, was/is very much aware of his flaws. He said he wrote the song in the mindset of thinking about those fans that are taking him way too seriously. Just imagine being the artist who is dealing with their own demons whose is now tasked with holding up the hopes and dreams of a fan that expects you, the artist, to be perfect? That has to be extremely annoying! It reminds me of what Marilyn Monroe said about fans/media: “they take away pieces of you”. But it’s always hard to be the “beloved”, as Carson McCullers wrote

Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored-up love which has lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto. And somehow every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his love is a solitary thing. He comes to know a new, strange loneliness and it is this knowledge that makes him suffer. So there is only one thing for the lover to do. He must house his love within himself as best he can; he must create for himself a whole new inward world — a world intense and strange, complete in himself….[T]he value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself.

It is for this reason that most of us would rather love than be loved. Almost everyone wants to be the lover. And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being loved is intolerable to many….For the lover is forever trying to strip bared his beloved.

I don’t have a positive association of MJ fans, LOL. I’ve seen some pretty horrific behavior that made me wonder if MJ fans weren’t the vilest of them all! (I’ve heard some bad things about Beyonce and Madonna fans, and seen rude behavior from Mariah Carey’s “Lambs” and Christina Aguilera fans, too, LOL). But, I was just saying that if they are not committing some horrid act of stalking or other offensive behavior (of which there are many) and just focusing on his music etc, their intense passion for Michael Jackson is generally harmless, and it would be cruel to disrupt what isn’t affecting me. On the flipside, though, I remember reading in James Safechuck’s supplemental declaration that the adulation MJ got — just for being a massive celebrity — was enough of a barrier to admitting what happened, that he was essentially a “nobody” in comparison, so I sometimes even wonder how harmless is it to exalt a person up to the point that, by contrast, those that said celebrity may have wronged feel so powerless?

Mahoney

Hi Shawn,

very familiar with the work of Mr. Mathers… He actually has some very interesting parallels with MJ if you think about it. Working Class background, abusive parent, escape through music, drug addiction, onstage persona that’s nothing like his offstage persona, mixing & using the “other race’s music” to gain huge success/appeal etc… Hopefully Marshall’s story has an happier ending. The fact that he made Dido listenable was a miracle on it’s own!

I agree with everything you said, I think the danger is putting all of MJ’s fans (even some of the most ardent ones) in this camp. It’s become really clear to me recently that a lot of these fans are just, well… young. The nostalgic wave set off from his death clearly has influenced a whole new generation.

A 12-15 yr old kid going through that phase of looking up to something/one that is unreachable… tends to be a thing we all go through to some extent. They just happen to have chosen MJ, maybe it was by chance or a family friend…

That’s why I don’t like the term F’loon, taken at face value – One could actually be calling kids/young adults “Fucking Lunatics”, just for simply “getting into” and defending the wrong idol… and that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It’s overtly simplistic, reductive, patronizing and quite childish.

I guess at the moment it’s easy for me to say it, because I’ve had no negative reactions from the MJ community (I assume if I continue to pick the sequins off his glove on this site I’ll eventually get a grilling).

But as you said “but I think most fans in general are harmless, and can’t be bothered with learning the dark underbelly of their idol. It serves no purpose for them” is probably the overwhelming majority.

Apologies for the late reply btw. 🙂

ShawntayUStay

You think MJ used another race’s music? Personally, I think MJ was always and forever pissed that a “white person who sang black” was preferred over the real thing. He’s from that generation. I think he transformed because of it.

I am guilty of having used the term “floon” in the past, but I don’t use it anymore — scratch that, I don’t use it to describe any fan but the most reprehensibly insane, the ones that are offensively vile in their MJ love; the stalkers and harassers. The portmanteau therefore fits, LOL. Other fans though? They are just into MJ for who they think he was and his artistry. No harm, no foul. My stepfather is a fan of MJ, he couldn’t care less about his personal life, he just likes the music. He’s not a f’loon.

Many fans of MJ are young, which is quite strange as he was slightly before my time as well. But some of the behavior that you can see, for example on YT, is somewhat age-appropriate, you know, the fruitless arguments of who’s the “greatest of all time”, school yard taunts of idiot and stupid; that was what I did in 4th and 5th grade in the late 1990s during the Bubblegum pop wave of Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears, N*SYNC and the Backstreet Boys (I was a hardcore Xtina fan, LOL). So most of it’s harmless and they’ll grow out of it and realize (hopefully) that it’s silly to put so much stock in a stranger. But I’m always shocked to find 50 y.o.+ MJ fans acting like that!

Mahoney

“You think MJ used another race’s music?”

Yup, not exclusively of course… And I’m not saying it in a detrimental sense either – I see it very much as a positive (in fact a lot of his other influences were, of course, white – Chaplin, Astaire, Kelly, Vincente Minnelli, Fosse etc.), and MJ wasn’t the first or last recording artist to do so… Without sounding hippy-dippy… Music should be seen as a shared-race-be-damned-universal medium, whilst still recognising, appreciating and acknowledging the incredibly rich variety of origins.

He also used white artists in order to lay-pipe to more mainstream success, you don’t duet with Paul McCartney or get Eddie Van Halen to guest-riff on your rock tune to re-enforce any kind of black-ethnicity do you? No, you do it because they’re great performers, plus hey – they just happen to have a huge white fan-base! Who’da thunk it eh?

It’s also interesting to think that pre-Thriller he was working with Anka wasn’t he? Whom I believe, after last looking at the official charts – is the fourth whitest man on the planet after myself, Carrot-Top and Donald Trump.

Curse you Donald! One day I’ll be number one! Plus- I’m bringing back Crocs… They’re comfy and affordable!!!

Not that it’s surprising – Just look at the success he had with Rod Temperton…

I’m glad you see my point re. “F’loon”.

In interest of full-disclosure however, I still consider myself a fan of the majority MJ’s artistic output, up to and around Dangerous (Including his work with his brothers – Destiny is one funky-ass album), plus that awesome performance at MTV awards in ’95.

I’ve got a few years on you so it seems, so it probably doesn’t surprise you for me to admit MJ was my first big celebrity idol.

Thriller was the first album I bought (on tape!!), I have amazing memories of stopping up with my Dad waaaaaaaaaay back in ’83 to watch the UK premiere of Thriller Video on C4, in fact MJ was the first gig I saw live – Dangerous Tour, Roundhay Park, Leeds in ’92 (it was awesome).

Those days are gone though and now I’m well aware that the guy I idolised as a young man was, in all probability, a drug-addicted-egotistical-manipulative-peadophile who’s dark side is utterly repellent.

So, the reason I’m actually here on this site talking to you lovely people – is not to ruminate on his guilt (not that it isn’t a valid and worthy thing to do – just you guys are doing more than a fine job without my sarcy-ass muddying the waters)… But to actually see if I can get to the bottom of what it means to be a fan of the art and not the artist.

Does that have any longevity? Am I actually willingly engaging in a form of cognitive dissonance? Is it a fruitless task? Is it dishonest to myself? Does it matter? And, of course… Where do the ripples go in the water?

And if the rule applies to MJ, do I take a look at my Blu-ray collection and get rid of Rosemary’s Baby and Chinatown because of Polanski’s history? Do I get rid of my Hitchcock collections because of his behaviour? Hell.. Do I throw out Ferris Bueller because Broderick killed some poor unfortunate Irish mother & daughter with his car?

I want answers dammit Shawn!!!

Now!!

ShawntayUStay

All I can say, Mahoney, is, in my opinion, it really truly depends on the person and what their threshold is with respect to other people’s behavior. I think it also has to do about the degree of proximity: he closer and more intimately associated one is to another, the more likely that person will have a bigger issue with the other person’s misdeeds. Celebrities aren’t that close that their mess gets on one’s shoes so I think most people can tolerate a few stumbles. People are also keen on forgiving if the celebrity idol is apologetic. Most people say “It’s not my life, whatever” and keep playing the song/movie; it’s a bit unfair to expect perfection anyways.

But it depends on what the person was accused of doing/did do. For example, Bill Cosby has likely irreparably ruined his legacy and star power, unless of course he makes a huge apology. Most people can’t accept being a fan of a serial rapist. They don’t know him well enough to see past the sins. Those that do stay with Bill are either his close friends/family or those that just don’t believe it. I don’t imagine the crowd of people saying “His work overshadows any rape he may have committed” is that large.

The same applies to MJ. Most people that are admirers of his work don’t believe he molested young boys. There are ones that do think he was a molester but are still fans of him and his artistry, likely because they have explained his behavior as just an outcome of being a victim himself — of his father, of fame. They have empathy for MJ the “victim”. I can still listen to his music and still enjoy the songs because personally, I think of MJ as a “loveable freakshow”, and I have a lot of warm feelings toward the original MJ pre-Thriller. He’s a person, so I feel sorry for him even though I believe/know he did bad stuff to little boys (who I feel for, too). I do however get a hearty chuckle when I hear him singing about a woman — he knew he didn’t like vagina, LOL.

So it depends on you, I guess, as to whether you can stomach MJ’s music knowing he was a pedo. There’s no connection between the art and the acts, as far as we know. And can you see him as just another flawed human being. I doubt that Albert Einstein’s achievements would be undone if we found out he was unsavory. Thomas Edison was, and he’s still in the history books!

Mahoney

Well, let me tell you a little story Shawn my new beautiful/bestest/cross-dressing-buddy/personal-online therapist/trainer/life-coach (You look EXACTLY like Rupaul in my head and whether you actually do or not – nothing you can do will shake that… Hey, Rupaul released a single with Elton John and Elton John did a spot at the Grammy’s once with Eminem and they performed “Stan”, coincidence? I think not… It all comes FULL CIRCLE… It’s a conspiracy… “We’re through the looking-glass here people”).

Anyhoo… Just had amazing weekend with my beautiful daughter (she turned 3 in Jan) and my Mrs (she’s older)… And my daughter wanted to listen to MJ for the first time in months as we went to visit grandparents, we’ve been listening to The Stones & The Beatles recently – that’s pleased me no end.

Her current MJ faves are “Dancing Machine”, “The Girl Is Mine”, “Give In To Me”, “Scream”, “Say Say Say”, “Smooth Criminal” and “Billie Jean”, random, but I approve.

So we had a bit of an MJ weekend… It was fun, we danced, we sang… I answered questions about Janet, why Thriller isn’t “really scary”, how he must have a “magic penny” because of Smooth Criminal and the reason he throws his hat away when performing Billie Jean is because “he doesn’t need it any more”.

And after all that, I now have a kind of “buyer’s remorse” about the whole thing. Sad uh? Not that I’ll let it ruin the memories with my kid, nothing is worth giving that up… But there is always that niggling thought in the back of my head.

Oh and the lyrics to Give In To Me freaked me out for the first time – “Don’t try to understand me… Just simply do the things I say…” *shudders*

It did get me thinking about other disgraced hero’s of mine from my youth – Hulk Hogan, Mel Gibson etc. and I still haven’t come to any solid conclusions. I’m still just cherry-picking the good parts and throwing away the bad… Is the fact that I’m recognizing the bad parts good enough?

Who the hell knows??… I do know however, I can still do a decent Moonwalk on the kitchen floor in my socks.

“Hee, hee… Pow… etc. etc.”

ShawntayUStay

At least you recognized my avatar as RuPaul; some fan on here thought it was Lady Gaga! LOL. I love RuPaul, he seems like genuinely compassionate, humble person. He’s very inspirational. Actually, my screename is based on his show “RuPaul’s Drag Race”. He says to the queens who are safe from elimination “Shawntay, you stay” and to the losing queens “Sashay away”, LOL. Better to be “Shawntay” rather than “Sashay” from my perspective!

Does your daughter like “Lovely One”? That’s one of my favorite MJ songs. He sounds so free-spirited!

That’s a tough one, the feeling of “Buyer’s Remorse”. It’s funny because I had a similar thing this weekend, too. My local PBS station was playing the Motown 25 special and I saw MJ with his brothers doing Jackson 5 tunes and, of course, his famous Billie Jean performance. I thought he looked so adorable and lithe, it was quite shocking to think about what he became — the ghostly pale, freakish boy-lover overloaded with bad plastic surgery. Because at that moment, he was still amazing. I always wonder what that Michael Jackson would think if you showed him a pic of himself from the 2000s? Or little Mike Jackson from the J5? Would he scream and vow never to do that to himself? I think he would, but then you realize that he did indeed do that to himself without a second thought — funny how that works!

That’s why, for me, there is a firm separation between that MJ (and before), and the crazy one from post-1993. I don’t want to sully the “good MJ” (although, the crazy MJ is quite hilarious and sometimes strangely loveable(?), ignoring the criminal behavior, of course. It’s all so weird!). Just like you, I guess I’ll cherry-pick when necessary. It’s only fair, after all, because no one is perfect. (Mel Gibson? What did he do? Call some lady Sugar Tits (LOL)? Made “Passion of the Christ”? I don’t get the hatred of him, to be honest. So what if he drank too much, or made some bad decisions/comments. We all make mistakes…if one is sincerely apologetic/makes changes, who am I to hold it against them forever? That’s messed up, IMO. “Do unto others…” etc)

It’s good enough to recognize the bad parts, IMO. Many fans refuse to, which makes some of them act especially vicious to critics. If you recognize the faults of said celebrity idol, I think you won’t feel that knee jerk feeling to defend everything they do; I think many fans think that it’s a reflection on them if their idol is somehow “corrupt”, when in actuality there is no nexus between the fan and the idol. They need to disentangle themselves! Also, maybe it’s just me but I sort of feel it’s not right to just throw a person (i.e. idol) away just because of some missteps. I just think of the body of work they did and to ignore it because of one bad thing…I don’t know, it seems wrong. How do you take away achievements that we all benefited from? How is that even possible to do, realistically?

Oh and the lyrics to Give In To Me freaked me out for the first time – “Don’t try to understand me… Just simply do the things I say…” *shudders*

I’ve always wondered about that lyric. Seems to be the story of his life if you think about it. But that’s the consequence of handlers and hangers-on telling him that he’s so amazing. He actually started to believe it! He also would say “Leave me alone” a lot, too. Like in “Heaven Can Wait”, which doesn’t really fit with the theme of the song. Perhaps MJ always felt so hunted and misunderstood.

Mahoney

I’ve never played “Lovely One” for her… But she’d probably like it because it’s a bouncy lil’ tune isn’t it? She’s loves anything like that. Say what you will about his relationship with his brothers, but his performances (for the most part) overflow with energy and life when he was with them. It was there early on in his solo stuff also… That Michael rarely surfaced post-Off The Wall.

Rock With You is the perfect example of that, even in the video – he seems utterly jubilant and it truly comes through in the music, he just seems so full of joy and absolutely lost in his love of performing. That MJ simply just wasn’t there in the later years (apart from occasional flashes here and there) certainly after ’95.

“I always wonder what that Michael Jackson would think if you showed him a pic of himself from the 2000s” – I’m not sure he’d believe it was him!! I still have difficulty myself.

That Motown Performance is pretty special I agree, he’s on the right side of the surgery and he just exudes talent and energy – it’s in direct contrast with that Godawful 2001 performance just before 9/11. I don’t know if you’ve seen it the “30th anniversary” or some such nonsense … it’s when he’s wearing his “Invincible” face.

He’s just going through the motions and spends the majority of it trying to cover his lizard-esque appearance… I find it genuinely difficult to sit through. Sad.

I still don’t understand what happened to his face from 2000 onward, don’t think he’s ever looked worse that the Invincible era. The heavy eyelids and ever-decreasing schnoz aside, it’s the first time I noticed that he couldn’t smile the same way he used to. He once had that mega-watt smile – it was a wide as the ocean and as white a tundra – but from around 2001 until his death you could barely see his top teeth when he smiled. So odd.

As for Gibbo, I was thinking more of the spousal abuse.

Gosh… Don’t we cover some Jolly subjects here at MJ facts???

“Join us next week kid’s in which MJ Facts will be brought to you by the letter C – for Concentration Camps”

The person who translated Omer’s comment is a native of Norway and speaks the same language as Omer Bhatti. If you have a differing or better translation, why didn’t you provide it in your comment?

truthfinder

@mjfacts Hello ! Thanks for your amazing work! It really opened my eyes. This is not an attac, I just want to help you. In this article you said Omer wasen’t with MJ during the visits after 2003 and this is false. In the pic bellow you can see Omer with MJs son Prince during the trip to the arabic world in 2005 (Omer released it) and you denied in this article that Omer was with him during that trip. Please correct that. I have a lot of more pictures of Omer being with MJ from 2004 til 2009 since I am active in Omer’s fan community. I hate MJ by the way for his manipulation of young boys. But if we want to convince more people of the truth, we also have to speak the whole truth. In this case we have to see that Omer was not like his other victims. He groomed him as a young boy but he stayed at his side when he was 14,18, 20 and so on. The complete opposite of the other boys. In his trip to the arabic world Omer shared his suit with Jackson one-on-one by the way. I think it’s obviously that Omer always had a sexual realtionship with Jackson was it because of manipulation or because of whatever. I think MJ was a pedophile, but not a core pedophile meaning he was able to have sex with adults too. I know that ecspecially those Omer/MJ fans will know that some facts in your article are false and they will think all article are false then(your other articles are perfect by the way). And he also abused those other boys (Juju Elatab) probably because Omer couldn’t completly satisfy that monster anymore. Why Omer’s story is so different? Well, I think MJ fell in “love” with him,maybe he had emotions as well.That’s also the reason why he is always with the Jackson family and sit in the front row at his memorial.I guess his family knew it. Omer also spended christmas in 2006 with Jackson (you can hear him in the background of the video) cause a fan once sended him that video saying it’s him,MJ and the kids and Omer liked that tweet on Twitter. Omer spended the most time with MJ than in Norway . If you want I can send you more pictures but than I need something from you. To conclude, I want to say again thanks for your amazing work but you have to correct that article as fast as possible, everyone can make mistakes, cause like I said a lot of people (ecspecially fans) know this and then they think everything on this page is false even though your other articles are perfect, and what do we want? We want to convince people that Jackson was abusing many boys, but again like i said then we still have to speak the truth too.

michaeljeffrey

@mjfacts Yes I also wanted to add that.Your articles are telling the truth and your work is wonderful,but in that article I have to critize you as well (please don’t blame me for it) I hope this will be helpful. In Omer’s case we have to admit that he didn’t care about him getting adult. Already in the years 2000-2003(Omer being 16-19) a person who only is attracted to kids would have thrown him away (I guess MJ was attracted to male children and men, since I heard him having an affair with young Libarence’s Ex who was in his 20s as well.)But that’s exactly what I was thinking while reading this as well.
“On his trips to Dubai, Irland & through the United States Omer was not with him after the 2003 allegations.. This isn’t the truth at all.
One of the first trips he did was to Hawaii in March 2004 only with Omer Bhatti & his children:http://i.skyrock.net/4721/81694721/pics/3064690755_1_3_cH3erLa9.jpg
Another picture :http://i.skyrock.net/7332/80227332/pics/3171204685_1_19_e39FeDez.jpg
The next trip in 2004 was to Vegas right along with Michael : Omer Bhatti.https://www.instagram.com/p/uy8BU3R9EK/
And as the person above me already said and proofed he was on that trip to Dubai as well. Same goes for Christmas 2006.
It is not right that Omer didn’t live with Michael anymore after 2003. He left the ranch in 2003 YES but so did Michael. He did start to create his career YES but mostly in the states with Michael , he just bought a house in Norway to produce etc and to bring his music out there cause he knew it’s easier to be succesfull in Norway than in the states,but he still spend most of the 12 months of a year with Jackson. The norwegian people found that curious but Omer never said something about MJ before his death.
This picture was released by Omer ,taken in 2008 with Michael:http://i43.servimg.com/u/f43/16/03/34/21/tumblr10.jpg
This picture was taken on the 7th birthday of his youngest son by Michael of Omer (13th Feburary 2009 , 3 months before MJ died) :http://i.skyrock.net/7332/80227332/pics/3256062150_1_3_B2ansNBg.jpg
8 weeks before Michael died Omer was still with him (I heard him saying that in an Usstream from 2014)
He then left for visiting a dance academy in florida & for visiting his family in Norway. He definitly planned to go back to Michael.
Michael used to see Omer as a part of his family besids his children. Here a picture of him with his son in 2005, And another with his oldest son and his daughter in 2006:http://i.skyrock.net/4721/81694721/pics/3064816705_1_3_kNLKjHu5.jpghttp://i.skyrock.net/7332/80227332/pics/3192096153_1_5_1yMGfgJ6.jpg
He also did a photoshooting in 2004 for example with his son Blanket,Omer & himself:https://www.instagram.com/p/2rBYTbKEKq/?hl=dehttp://i.skyrock.net/7332/80227332/pics/3171204685_1_17_Xz3uWlMV.jpg
He always took photos of Omer along with his children. (By the way this alone should proof their sexual bonding never ever ended in 2003) This makes me wonder. Does he wanted to make Omer a young step father to his children? I heard Blanket used to call Omer dad in 2009. When he got older & understood what was going on the children changed it to brother. I sometimes question myself if Omer isn’t the biological father of Blanket. I also have a lot more photos of Omer between 2003 and 2009. Please klick at every link I have sended you cause it was a lot of work. In the cascio case it’s clear he spended 93-96 alone with the Cascio boys and after it only with the whole Cascio family including their sister. He was never seen alone with Frank& Eddie anymore. But since the Jackson family also sees Omer as a family member and he is always around them we really have to think about all of that. I think, I would share the opinion Mj truly loved this boy (never cared about his sister or parents at all)and was maybe abusing the other boys cause he needed to satisfy his other side as well when Omer turned older.. Like those men who abuse little girls while loving their wife absolutley cause they are not a 100% pedophile maybe a 70% one. This is not even rare. I would consider Omer as a victim of MJ & later as his lover , maybe as already said only because of the manipulation. He definitly shared more than 6 years his bed , he just shared six years Mjs Neverland bed 😉 so hope this was helpful & hopefully you will change this into the truth, so you can go on to convince people. Maybe bring my idea into it as well why Omer was still on MJs side & the example with the wife. You really need to re-upload this (this is a help, not meaning you are not a good writer) I would say Omer was in a sexual bonding until 2009 or I would write started in 1996, not knowing when it ended but 2003 is not possible. Please change that as fast as possible, because other wise you loose people believing in you cause as Omer gets more and more popular, people found it out. Your information is more or less stucked in 2009, I’d say 🙂

ShawntayUStay

Excellent pictures and information! You fans always have the goods 🙂

I have to say…I’m completely shocked. I always suspected that Omer Bhatti was a special friend because of the way MJ met him and wanted Omer with him constantly — just like Brett Barnes (who was with MJ almost the entire year of 1992), Jimmy Safechuck, Jordie Chandler, etc — but I would never have guessed that there would be so much photographic evidence to support the idea that he was also MJ’s live in lover. It’s all so twisted, especially since he had Omer so close to his kids for years, to the point they refer to him as an older brother. So scandalous!

I believe this is in line with James Safechuck’s claim that MJ “married” him when he was 11, complete with wedding ring and fake certificate. I think MJ wanted a “boy wife”, to have a “committed” relationship with a young boy in the same way that adults have with each other. I think you’re on to something…..

Pea

Absolutely, fans have the best stuff. 🙂 And interesting observation about the wedding stunt Jacko did with James Safechuck, Shawntay. I’m sure Omer Bhatti was a “wife”, too.

Jimmy seemed to be the last boy Jacko was in a more “monogamous” relationship with; I always figured that his relationships with Emmanuel Lewis, Jonathan Spence, and James were when he was still timid about his pedophile sexuality, and stable “boy wives”, like James became, were “safer”. After Jimmy, when he fooled around with Mac Culkin, Wade Robson, and Brett Barnes, he seemed to be having intense but polyamorous affairs. Boys were overlapping on top of one another (pardon the pun!), and it was getting extremely messy….

After the Jordie Chandler scandal, Jacko had to settle down because he almost went to prison. I think when he found Omer, he was “in love” because Omer represented the life he used to lead. He wasn’t going to let that boy get away and brought him to Neverland. But he had kids, so his “wife” became their “brother”, at least during the daytime. He was always extremely good at hiding everything he was doing so, as sick as it was, I doubt his kids ever got a whiff of what was going on between Daddy Michael and Big Brother Omer.

It is all so sordid, albeit in a surreal, darkly comedic way — sometimes I have to pinch myself when I think of Michael Jackson as a “pedophile”. At any rate, Omer’s parents should be jailed.

Fudhux

This is what I was thinking . What do his kids think about all of that ? I mean they probably thought about it in my opinion . They know about the problems that their father had so I am sure they have doubts about it. Or maybe they are in denial like his fans.

yaso

I think MJ pedophilic activities weren’t only limited to Omar after the Chandler scandal, most probably Omar was his favorite, But i think there were many other unknown boys at least till the molestation trial 2004.

Thank you so much for your excellent information! We’ll be adding it to our story.

michaeljeffrey

Thank you so much! 🙂https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omer_Bhatti
The german wikipedia is a perfect soucre. The fans already wanted to destroy the article but they couldn’t find any soucre against that.
Here it does say: (i’m fine at both languages) Omer lived with Michael until MJs death with him at different houseses (“Anwesen”) is plural in german & that he returned to Norway for a constatly living after Jackson died. Here is also the story in it that Bhatti was in florida while Jackson died & that he was also as an underage person pretty much alone with Michael. This article even includs the idea of Bhatti being MJs lover. The fans freaked out but they didn’t were able to change it at all.
And i found that pic of Omer in the arabic world too.
they did also live in Bahrain together and they shared their bed , I’l have to find again the soucre. However this was in 2005:http://images6.fanpop.com/image/photos/38300000/-omer-bhatti-and-prince-jackson-rare-prince-michael-jackson-38314788-640-960.jpg
Like I already said MJ was completly obsessed of the idea that Omer was the kids step father.
The germans are definitly up to date since it says that Omer might be his lover already at age 12.
They are not blinffolded by the media & their wrong articles about Omer and Jacksons relationship in 2009 made by journalists who didn’t know better at that time.
sadly, I don’t live in Germany.

Oh well, I didn’t know that . Thank you for the info. This is weird , indeed. I think that he wants to do a MJ kind of friendship. Like imitating him but with who he befriends . His legacy lives …. Lol and not a good one

Pea

I never realized it until recently but Omer calling himself “kidslife” is beyond odd. It’s not to suggest Omer Bhatti is a pedophile, but it’s obvious, given his various postings on his Instagram, that he believes the same things Jacko did about youth.

That being said, I wouldn’t leave my children around Omer Bhatti unattended. This is a man who likely had a sexual relationship with an adult man who believed he was Peter Pan. Omer would, therefore, believe that kind of thing was “natural”, as he seemed to allude to in that Norwegian Elle magazine article. Unlike every other ‘special friend’, he is hanging around unrelated young boys.

The difference is that Omer Bhatti likes adult women; however, that wouldn’t necessarily preclude him from misbehaving with young boys in the same context as his relationship with Jacko. I would just hope his adult heterosexuality is enough to blunt any nascent impulses for boys. He needs counseling.

Fudhux

I know right ?! I have seen that video and it was even all over the comments how MJ and Eddie looked like a gay couple . I don’t think I am the only one that thinks that but I think Eddie was attracted by MJ . I don’t think MJ was attracted to Eddie lol : right gender , wrong age and color.

michaeljeffrey

I do think so. He was not only attracted to Kids, he has been into omer also as an adult , so why not Eddie as well? Most pedophiles are not only into kids. The ones that are only into kids make up maybe 5 percent.

Fudhux

No one knows if he and Omer had a sexual relationship when Omer was grown. Personaly I don’t think so. I think Jacko kept Omer around because he wanted to keep manipulating him or for whatever else. But I don’t think it was sexual. Maybe I am wrong. Who knows. With Jacko nothing surprises me anymore.

michaeljeffrey

I am sure it was cause Omer used be in family pics etc. Same for me. Nothing surprises me. Bhatti was already a grown in 2002-2003 by the way.

Fudhux

Omer parents were pimps . Like all the other parents of MJ’s little boyfriends. Shame that some people are ready to sell their kids for fane and money.
As for Omer eating disorder , I don’t know if he has one but he doesn’t look too thin to me at leat on these photos.

Dalia Burgos

This article has some interesting points BUT the article is biased and not impartial. Who made this “research or investigation” is not legal…Insinuates all the time the posibility for Michael of being a phedofile. Also did not mention Michael carried not only Omer to his vacations to South Africa (The video is showed as example) Michael was traveling with Katherine, Joe Jackson, Lisa Marie Presley and her sons…and the most important: Michael demostrated to be innocent in the Arvizu trial. Why the “journalist” didnt take in account this fact before seeding the dude about his innocence? Thumbs down.. 🙁

Pea

Dalia, do you not find it interesting that Michael Jackson’s fans put more emphasis on the fact Lisa Marie Presley went along, too, on the visit to South Africa than they do Omer’s presence? After that visit, how many photographs showed Jacko with Lisa Marie versus the amount of photographs showing Omer with him? It is quite clear that Omer was the more significant guest on that visit to South Africa. A month later, Omer would move into Neverland.

As for the Arvizo case, that has no bearing on his relationship with Omer Bhatti. Jacko may have been innocent in that case, but Gavin Arvizo was no where near as close to Jacko as was Omer Bhatti.

michaeljeffrey

In my last comment (where you thanked me for my info &told me to add it) I was posting Pics of Omer with Michael/Michael’s kids from 2004 -2009. If you want more of those,just ask.
However, I just thought I bring you some pictures of Omer in MJ’s house, which were sometimes taken by MJ as well.
The picture in front of the car was taking in 2007, when Omer’s sister and her sons visited Omer in the states. The car behind was Omer’s car at the time, of course bought by MJ. Omer released that pic some years ago saying MJ took the pic.
The next pic where he is holding his nephew was taken in MJ’s house in 2009. His sister released that picture , again taken when his sister & her sons visited Omer &the kids &MJ.
The next picture was taken in MJs private cinema(????)or another room, could be in Neverland (maybe they visited Neverland again, of course just a visit).However this was taken in 2008.
And now it gets WEIRD the next pic was taken in by MJ and it shows Omer in 2007-2009 (don’t know the year , just judging by Omer’s look)
He is laying on a couch like a kid & he has child sweets around him.
Did MJ wanted him to look like a kid? The pic is very odd to me!
I don’t know if this is relevant for you (doesn’t have to be) but don’t forget all the mistakes from the article that I have sended you in my last comment.
by the way: I have a question. If your busy or anything else I would like to know if you have guest writers,than I could correct the article myself or be part of all of this cause I love this work.Is there a possibility to become a writer on this page if I have soucres etc for everything?
Or is this whole work only done by one person?
Thank you.

Pea

MichaelJeffrey, can you do us a favor and knock it off? You continue to leave multiple comments under different user names (truthfinder and Alina — we can see your IP address, so we know it’s all the same person!) calling this website “bullshit”, not “objective”, and “false” simply because the admins here have not buckled to your demands.

It’s harassing and obsessive, and you need to calm yourself down.

Fixing or updating an article takes time. While you’ve provided some interesting images, we have to verify that the information is accurate. And since you seem to have a huge stake in this Omer-Michael story, we are definitely going to be extra cautious about just publishing what you’ve provided right away. What are you trying to prove? If it is so important to you, you can open your own website, write about your findings there, and leave a comment linking to your blog with your “proofs”….

What exactly is wrong about this article anyway? To us, the “error” is quite small, although we aren’t opposed to fixing it. We’ve stated that Omer’s relationship with Jacko tapered off in 2003. Your images suggest that Omer was still in his life. What they do not prove is Omer being Jacko’s adult lover — they simply prove that Jacko continued to have him around. Jacko also continued to have Frank Cascio around, but that doesn’t necessarily prove that they were adult lovers either.

So, if you can refrain from leaving multiple, aggressive comments under different user names, that would just be peachy.

Thanks.

michaeljeffrey

That’s actually my younger sister,not me.As far as I have seen your message, I couldn’t believe it. I simply asked her and she made no deal of it. I even answerd her once and I didn’t know she was my sister. I am just gone crazy now.She is an hardcore fan of Bhatti.Can’t change that. She is only 14& got mad about the thing you wrote about Jackson and Bhatti since she doesn’t know what to believe since I told her my thoughts, she is very confused. I just talked to her and she said she is truthfinder and alina.Sorry but hey, she is a kid.I told her not to comment here again, at least not from my laptop.
Yeah right but how do you know it ended 2003? I mean if we are objectivly we don’t know. Since there is no edvice for an ending. Since they took family shoots together etc as they did before, as he was on the trips as he was before. We can’t just randomly pick a year where it ended as we would like. Frank Cascio wasen’t on family pics with Jacksons kids or MJ and wasen’t sitting in the front row along his family & he used to be around him with his family, unlike Bhatti who is still visiting them. For me that’s point. The pictures or storys that we have of Omer also doesn’t proof 100% that he was his child-lover,same goes for the adult pics! There are no more edvice for both ages of Bhatti.I guess that’s what we believe. That shooting with Blanket in 2004 was the most advice for being his lover though. And why should it ended in 2003? In 2003 Bhatti was a grown man like he was in 2006. If you seriously believe he was only into young boys. Than why you say it ended in 2003? I mean than it must have ended in 1998/99 when Bhatti was like 14/15 but not as a young man in 2003. However, thanks for saying thanks for my photos. I know it takes time & that’s what I told my little sister as well. I know you don’t have to fix it but if you let it stay like this than this sentence “trips to Dubai,United States etc) is just a lie.. and that isn’t objective either. Am I right?
i would definitly like to open my own page but I don’t know how this works. Never created a website before. Can you give me some Tipps, a program? Or anything else? How can I create a page?

Andreas

Its an interesting suggestion that he was into these boys, like Omer, when they’re grown up too. Its not impossible. I’m not sure though. I think one of the indications it is doubtful Michael was very interested in male adult lovers is because of the story of James Safechuck(very good article about his story on this site). Michael was obsessed with James Safechuck when he was a kid, but when James turned 15 and entered puberty, Michael completely lost interest in him. He told his staff to say he wasn’t home when James called. Extremely cold. 🙁

This a typical story when it comes to pedophiles too. They often throw away their victims like old socks when they enter a certain age around puberty. Their victims, sometimes very compliant to their molesters, and even dependent on them sometimes, do meet a lot of tough realizations when their “daddy” suddenly doesn’t want anything to do with them anymore. They often get messed up in the head. This happened with James Safechuck.

I’d say people like Frank Cascio and Omer Bhatti was around longer more likely because Michael found some other role for them to progress into. Cascio was hired to help out the business, he still is it seems, and Bhatti perhaps helped out with the kids and whatever else.. Its was probably a clever strategy to keep them close and dependent on him later on, because then they would hopefully be loyal to him and never tell on him. It even seems like Michael planned ahead with some of these kids too. Exploiotable as childs, and as grown ups they’d be business partners, and Michael would promise to help them to become directors, actors, artists, dancers and so on. He would hook them up. Sadly I think both Bhatti and Cascio feel so much debt to Jackson its probably too difficult for them to ever come forward, but I hope I’m wrong.

As for websites, check out WordPress. Easy to install and looks good.

michaeljeffrey

I am now working on my own page,thanks.
Well yeah but there is a huge difference between Cascio and Omer.

Andreas

I didn’t see this before now. Okay, so I did the translation. Um, honestly, I don’t see how the translation of the sentence is wrong, its my mother language, but you are correct that the quote skipped a line or two. (That is what the […] means, y’know!) Omer also says in there that Michael was too nice, and took harm in being too naive. I simply deemed the sentence unrelated to the rest, so that is why I skipped it, and also for length reasons.

The sentence that Michael deemed some things ‘innocent’ that other people might not was the interesting part of the quote. Its also an answer he gives while asked about the allegations around him, which makes it even more curious. You’re free to make your own translation though. I certainly don’t mind. I’m not denying that Omer had good things to say about Michael though. He certainly does, but at TV interviews he also acts very curious, and always complains about there being parts of his relationship with Michael that he wants to keep to himself. He reasons this because he felt like the media haunted him so much that he didn’t have a private life, “so he needs to have some things to himself”, but he’s so absurdly touchy about it, its odd. Another curious thing is that when he talks about the media he sounds exactly like Michael.

I do think Omer was molested. I used to think Shawntay’s theory about him being ‘sold’ to Michael from his family was over-the-top, too extreme, but I do wonder too if that really was the case with him. When in 2009 the whole “Is Omer the biological son of Michael?”-spectacle stormed(because Omer sat with the Jackson family at the funeral) there was news reports in Norway of Pia Bhatti, Omer’s mom, calling in sick from work for weeks, and basically asking people to stop focusing on it. Weird.

happymommy1 .

Hello Andreas

I am sorry, I didn’t mean that the translation of the sentence itself is wrong, but I got curious and read the whole article, and by doing so, I got another impression of what he wanted to say, and I noticed that by not showing the whole article, the content changes a lot. That is no news to people in the limelight, who are used to certain parts of what they say being picked out and amplified, when they really was saying things before and after that might have changed the whole thing. Media is very powerful. I also was curious since it is an article in Elle Magazine which is not tabloid to me, and it felt weird that they would go into such a topic.
If anyone would be interested I can still translate the article in its whole though, I have a passion for translating 🙂

Andreas

Hi. Well, as you perhaps know, Jackson has been officially accused of molesting boys five times, six if you count the Terry George incident(Jackson allegedly tried to engage in phone sex with him), and the police in his own county charged him twice, enormous trial in ’05, and so on, so I don’t understand why it would ‘tabloid’ for someone to ask Omer about his perspective in a portrait interview..?

Omer knew Jackson since he was a child, he was very close to him, and is still in contact with Michaels children, and the allegations are an important aspect of MJ’s life that is far more than just mere tabloid gossip. Elle Magazine is a fashion/beauty magazine. It was also re-posted in Dagbladet, which is one of the largest newspapers in Norway. The MJfacts team will probably contact you if they’d like a translation of the whole article.. but thats probably the only quote of any interest, in my opinion.

I’d be more interested how you actually read the quote though? You seem to read it different than me, so what do you think Omer means? That would be a lot more interesting to know.

happymommy1 .

Hello
I got the impression that Omer has a career of his own, and the photoshoot is beautiful, not some random photograph, so to me it seemed that the article was about him as an artist and not about his relation to Michael Jackson. I did not know about Omer until after Michaels passing.
To answer your question, I think that Omer means that Michael was being very open about sleepovers etc, because in his world, mind, it was innocent, while other people assumed that it was sexual, and that he was very naive to express himself about it and not being more precaucious. I do not think that Omer was trying to say that sexual relations with children was normal to Michael, especially not in Elle Magazine, or in any magazine.

Andreas

I see. Well, I concede that when you suspect Jackson was guilty of being a ‘boylover’ you might overanalyze and look for small signs and ‘glitches’ in whatever the boys he was close to that hasn’t come out says. Who knows.

I think it goes both ways though. People who think Jackson was just a very nice and eccentric guy that wanted innocent sleepovers with kids might read it like that, and it seems like you do, so no wonder you read it differently.

I still think the quote is a bit suspect though. When you’re asked about Jacksons molestation allegations in an interview and you answer that for Jackson certain things was innocent that might not be for others, you have to admit its strange.

Pea

I would more likely defer to your translation, obviously, with you being a Norwegian and all…. But happymommy is saying that Omer must be referring to the “sleepovers”; however, in your translation, you wrote Omer as saying, “certain things” were considered natural to Jacko. That plural, in my opinion, would mean that it had to be much more than sleepovers, correct? Or, I should say, several behaviors that other people would frown upon or wouldn’t do Jacko did them reflexively.

Omer Bhatti, who I never paid much attention to until the last couple of days, does seem to be continuing Jacko’s choices. So maybe his defense of those “certain natural things” is part of some kind of twisted apprenticeship…. I imagine being under Jacko’s tutelage as a young, starstruck, and foreign boy would really shape one’s worldview.

Andreas

Yes, what Omer says is in plural. So you would assume he’s not talking about one single thing. Swedish is quite close to norwegian, so Happymommy1 can probably read this as good as me. Its not the literal translation that we see differently though, its just what Omer means.

When Omer says some things are innocent to Michael which might not be for others, there’s no mention of ‘sleepovers’ at all in the text. Its just what she assumes Omer must be refering to. She obviously seem to think Michael was innocent of the allegations, and I think that affects it. People who think MJ was innocent and know about the sleepovers often think Michael saw them as innocent and was naive in the sense that he didn’t understand that people would react to them.

happymommy1 .

It IS very vague to me too, but it is so difficult when it is such a “blurry” interview, with no real “Questions and Answers”, it would be easier if it really came across how the conversation was between the reporter and Omer. Perhaps it is the editing, or perhaps Omer himself wants it that way, maybe he is shy, or have a strong integrity? I don’t know much about him.

I think that what you wrote in the middle is quite correct about me. I believe that he was his “reality”, his “world”, and a lot of people surrounding him were also a part of that reality. I would have loved to be around him, but after a while I would probably need some “fresh air” and some “normality” so to speak. Because in my world we sleep at night, are awake and go to work during the day and children have routines. I am a kindergarten assistant, to children 1-3 years of age, and have worked almost constantly with children since 1994, I am a mom of two young children, and I feel that a lot of quotes of Michael
regarding children in general really make sense, there are a lot of children suffering and feeling alone nowadays, and many children need more time with their parents, or any other adult that have time to listen to them.

Regarding Omer, it feels that he just wants to forget about the time with accusations and all, and just don’t wish to speak about it, I have absolutely no idea, but I wish the best for him

Pea

I know that Swedish and Norwegian are linguistic siblings, so to speak, but I do find it odd that the only people who’ve commented about the Norwegian-to-English translation (done by a Norwegian!) have been Swedes, and they’ve suggested that there’s an error.

Can you provide a translation of the passage? Not the entire article, but perhaps Omer’s entire response that’s been causing us some “problems”?

happymommy1 .

Hello Pea
I felt that the quote was taken out of context when I read the whole article. The article in itself is not very long, I can translate it, and perhaps Andreas can step in and correct if I am completely off the rails? I’ll try to provide a translation tonight when i’ve left work and am done with my children and cleaning.

happymommy1 .

Hello
It is passed midnight here, I am tired, but will try my best to translate the whole article, and if Andreas wants to correct anything, he may do so:

Dagbladet: A whole world reacted with shock when Michael Jackson died June 25:th, five years ago.

One of those who took the Thriller-legend’s passing extra hard was the norweigan artist and “Norwegian-talent” judge Omer Bhatti (28)

“To naive”
From the moment that the Holmlia-kid stepped up, dressed like Michael Jackson outside the stars hotel in Tunisia in 1996, they stuck together through thick and thin, in times when the storms raged the most around the king of pop.

I do not wish to speak/say that much about it, but what I want to say is that Michael on many levels were very innocent. Of course one can not expect that everyone else will have the same outlook on things, and he was to naive and got hurt by being to kind. For him, some things were natural and completely innocent, something not necessarily everyone would want to see the same way, says Bhatti in an interview in the last edition of Elle.

His musical image (michaels?) also had to suffer under the rumours of severe plastic surgery and abuse of alcohol and pills. For Bhatti, leaving his side was never an alternative.

-I would have wished that he would have had stood up for himself and put his foot down, it is possible that he would have been more understood then, Bhatti tells Elle.

“Feels responsibility for the children”

The judge of “norweigan talent” has today a very close relationship to Jackson’s children, Prince 16, Paris 15, and Blanket 11. Last year’s christmas was celebrated on Hawaii with them.

Bhakti earlier told “dagbladet” that he feels a responsibility to be there for them.

-We have a very, very good contact, that is something that I prioritise most, and that is the way it will always be. It is important to me. It’s like I said, you feel that you have a responsibility for someone. When you have such a strong bond, and you are fond of someone it is completely natural, he said in January.

Ok, that’s it from me, goodnight, tomorrow is workday and clean the house night <3

michaeljeffrey

Hello. This is gonna be my last post I promise!
I have to do a little correction on my info. That Vegas Trip was actually in 2003. But the other facts are true (Hawaii 2004, Photoshooting with Blanket 2004, photo of Blanket’s birthday 2009,
Arabic world 2005 with Prince , Photoshooting with Prince and Paris 2006,photo of Omer and MJ in 2008,that the constatly living in Norway started after 2009 & he in 2003 just bought a house there and flew there every year for a view weeks /months to bring his music out. By the way: No boylover has ever lived with MJ besids Omer so it wouldn’t be a prove in anyway that he bought a house in Norway) – see I’m honest, I just did a little mistake with the year of the Vegas Trip I’m sorry.
I just want to add some more :
Omer & Michael leaving theraphy centre in 2004:

(Watch pictures)
i think it was because of MJ’s drug problems.
I don’t want to seem odd or creepy to anyone here.
I don’t want you to write that Omer stayed his lover. I just want you to give this information, so people can decide if they believe he stayed or not for themselves. Here it seems like it is clear when it ended & that they hadn’t got any bonding afterwards,when it’s clearly not clear,since he never was replaced for another boy like Frank etc.
I hope you are thankful for my information though 🙂

michaeljeffrey

Okay this is really the last one, sorry sorry. But I’ve found one soucre for the theraphy centre and the Bahrain Trip. Then you don’t have to do so much research. This is an article from 2005:http://www.foxnews.com/story/2005/08/08/jacko-in-exile-with-20-year-old-proteacutegeacute.html
Even back then, his relationship to Omer seemed odd to most people. This article is about the Bahrain trip 2005, that they found him on Neverland in 2003 and the rehab stuff from 2004.
They question his relationship to Omer in his article a lot and it didn’t seem to normal to them at all back in 2005, they probably really already thought he was his lover. Please just read the old article . Please , you’ll be surprised. Good luck with your page.
The picture of Bhatti with Prince in Bahrain 05 was actually released by Bhatti himself , should be prove enough.https://mobile.twitter.com/realobee/status/583339829745717248

michaeljeffrey

And after that had lived so many months together in the arabic world trip (including Bahrain,Dubai etc) . They left it and flew together to Irland in 2006. I don’t know how many months they spended here together. I know that on that trip Omer visited his family in Norway and danced there since Norway and Irland isn’t far apart.But In Bahrain they were sharing their suite one-on-one. So that make more than 6 years bed-sharing (if something sexual happend or not) Still a creepy living on Jacksons arabic and Irland tour with a young man he met at age 12.
I should have become a journalist. Whatever,
I will be ready in 3 months with my own page and I would like to ask you if a coperation is possible. I am intrested in all boys (even I seem to be obsessed with the Omer story which isn’t the case , I just miss a lot of information in your article , and the don’t putting your opinion in it thing (objectivly) my first article would be about Brett Barnes by the way. Omer might be the last i write about probably cause it’s that easy.

Pea

That was a good post — good job! 🙂 Very informative and, in my opinion, leaves little doubt that Omer Bhatti was Jacko’s “boy wife”. They were evidently devoted to each other; it’s sad that Omer was manipulated from childhood to have sexual relations with Jacko, but when he hit 18, the age of consent in the state of California, there’s nothing much of us can do — they were free to be common law husband and husband. :/

michaeljeffrey

Right that is also why the police wasen’t after this in 2003-the boy was overage. I add something, maybe check it out again? And you can use all information to complete your own article about the years (2003-2009), and the Invincible album 2001 etc. Maybe check it out again. I also did an article about Culkin (check it out,it’s very objectivly& I want to do an youtube account to promote my blog. Interested in a work combination meaning our pages work together? We could be better than….correct and help each other like I did in your Bhatti article,that u will correct. A team always works better than single persons… promote each other etc. If not,it’s okay for me 🙂

michaeljeffrey

In culkin’s relationship i couldn’t find some odd to be honest since I found out he was rarely alone with MJ . The only odd thing was that MJ was only spending time with the Culkin boys & not with their daughters as always. I personally don’t think Culkin was a victim… Safechuck was for sure. I saw you added my quote from Omer about Jacksons death. What about adding their strange relationship after 2003 ? Their trips etc. Just adding how close they were not putting any sexual stuff in it, cause most people know they were close after 2003 and might think that page is untrue as my sister did,just name it. that Blanket photoshooting out of 2004 was a huge EDVICE to most people.A lot of people think he was Michael’s lover because of their trip to Bahrain or Ireland , blanket’s birthday 2009,or because of that rehab stuff. Happend after 2003 and if they find this odd, they find mostly also odd the relationship he had with him as an underage boy, I would definitly add it. It would convince more people and it would be the whole bhatti-jackson bonding, not just the Ranch-time bonding.The next boy I want to write about now after Culkin is Wade Robson. I will tell you when it’s ready. Culkin wasen’t as close as the other boys… most of their pics are from the one trip they did to Bermuda in 1991 and Culkin only slept a handful of times in Mjs bed.

Melissa

Wasn’t Brett Barnes who slept with MJ until he was 19 years old? He said this himself when testified.

Andreas

Nice post. Not to get too chatty, but as I understand it you’re a fan of Omer Bhatti? How did you become a fan of him? What songs and so on do you like?
Just curious.

Its just a bit odd if you’re a fan. I’m so used to MJ fans being stubborn beyond their existence that Michael wasn’t into little boys, its almost like their life depends on it, so seeing a fan of Omer Bhatti being engaged in proving there being a relationship there is interesting.

I have a quite different perspective on Gavin though, but I’ll let that one slide for now.

michaeljeffrey

I am not-my younger sister is and that’s why I am into this community a lot just for the simple reason to find pics etc. I did add something to my article. Maybe check it out. I also wrote one about Culkin , but again very objectivly.

ShawntayUStay

I read your Omer article, and was quite disturbed. Angry is a good word, at the fact that this was occurring right under our noses and no one did anything!

But a question: what is the goal/point of the piece? That’s what I’m unsure about. It kind of reads…weird. And then the video you’d linked before, talking about MJ’s male adult and boy “lovers”. It’s a little strange to say the least. :-/

michaeljeffrey

It wasen’t my video. I just found it on youtube. I don’t have a youtube account yet . What do you mean by what is the goal of the piece? I don’t understand your question.

ShawntayUStay

Come on, guy, that was your video! The same writing (and writing errors), the same syntax, the same strong focus on Omer Bhatti. Not to mention when you first linked the video, it had less than 10 views — and yet you found it?? I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m not stupid; that was your video. And that’s your YouTube channel because the videos correspond to the same ideas of some of your comments, and now your posts on your blog.

What’s up with that?

As for my question, it goes along with what I wrote above: what’s the point/goal of your posts? More specifically, why does it seem that you want to intimate that MJ had “boy lovers”, rather than say they are well groomed compliant victims of sexual abuse? It’s rather perverse, IMO.

What is the goal of telling the public, via your blog, that Omer Bhatti was more than just a victim of abuse, that he was a “step father” or some sort of lover/”boy wife” that loyally stayed by MJ’s side until his death in 2009?

It reads as gleeful enjoyment rather than shocked concern (the correct response to finding out Omer was with him that long).

Again: what is your goal?

michaeljeffrey

No it wasen’t. I never would believe that the director of thriller was his lover hahahaha. And hard focus on Omer Bhatti?! Yes, please type in Omer bhatti michael jacksons lover /boyfriend in youtube. There are a lot of videos about that, cause many believe that. I am not unsure about Safechuck either. I know he was abused.

michaeljeffrey

Also this person forgot Wade Robson (someone I would never forget) and even harder, she forgot Corey Feldman! I would never forget Corey,because everybody forgets him even this site. He was the 3rd guy I wrote about. And just because this person says MJ was into boys and men? Dude, do you know that most people think that – see on youtube,here. Mostly when I say that Omer was his boy until the end (in my opinion) most people come to me saying: oh not just Omer! Also Frank Cascio, Jason Pfeiffer etc. And to think Omer & him lastet until 2009 is very popular,just take a look on youtube. This page is the only page saying it ended in 2003 (not judging,i respect opinions). All other guys saying this on YT etc also say til 09. So no, I am not obsessed with Omer! I wrote an article about him,as I did with many others. The reason why I was here is that i do respect to say the sexual bonding ended in 2003 – but I don’t agree with naming no relationship after that when it’s fact & gives the full info.

ShawntayUStay

Sure. I know you made the video, guy. No need to pretend.

At any rate, so your goal for your entire site is to tell people that Omer Bhatti was still in MJ’s life? Okay…but the tone is odd. Very odd.

Mahoney

You do know Shawn… That it was me all along.

*Der Der Der*

In fact EVERYONE on here is me!

Mwahahahaha! Mwahahahaha! Mwahahahaha!

You think there is actually a Neely? Or a Miffy? Or Andreas? Or a Pea? No… This is just an elaborate and ingenious ruse by myself to prevent you doing something genuinely constructive!!

It was I on the grassy knoll, t’was I that told Pilot to wash his hands, t’was I that put the ram in the ramalangadingdong… t’was I that cancelled Firefly.

Tis’ I that puts your car keys in a place you never usually do… Just so that you’re late for work on a day you REALLY, REALLY, REALLY gotta be there on time.

The ultimate kicker?

There is no such person as Michael Jackson.

ShawntayUStay

LMAO! You are so silly 🙂

Who says I’m not doing anything “genuinely constructive”? My MJ ponderings are quite helpful to those lost in all the smoke and mirrors. 😉 Or so I hope……

Actually, your comment reminded me of a scene from an episode of Family Guy, were they were parodying old school TV talk shows like Sally, Rikki Lake, etc. The two guests were a lesbian couple and one had a confession to make. She told her girlfriend that “I’m not really a woman, I’m a man”, ripping off her disguise. The girlfriend was shocked, but then the “man” said “well I’m not really a man, I’m a horse”– ripping off another disguise. Finally, the “horse” had one more confession and said “well I’m not really a horse, I’m a broom”, unzipped the horse disguise, revealing a broom that fell to the floor. So the girlfriend was basically with an inanimate object the whole time?? So stupid and funny, I cracked up.

You playing those tricks on me? Are YOU really a broom?? LMAO

Mahoney

Ha… I nearly took that line out after I wrote it just in case you took it seriously! Joking aside I think this site is a genuinely important and useful and you’re a huge part of it.

I have seen that episode, that must be an old one surely… Because I haven’t watched it in about five years? I am not a broom, I was however genuinely tempted to create another account called BROOM and lovingly troll you via that… But that’s too much effort.

ShawntayUStay

Aww, thanks 🙂 I do try to make my comments as useful as possible lol. It’s very important to have alternative viewpoints about any subject, including MJ. His life was one that was full of complexity and contradiction, and not at all similar to the public perception. Also, there is a sense of duty to tell the truth — whatever that may end of being — for both his accusers and for little Mike Jackson of Gary, Indiana! What good does it do to not tell the whole story, warts and all?

Speaking of that, had your opinions on MJ changed/evolved since being on this site? Can you still see yourself as a fan if you think he’s done bad things? I know you asked that question, about being a fan of the music instead of the artist, many, many moons ago.

Btw, if you trolled me as “Broom”, I would have been flattered by all the effort…And of course highly amused! 🙂

MJ is a relatively small part of my life truth be told (that wasn’t always the case), he only really comes up when my little girl wants to listen/talk about him. She asked does he have a girlfriend this weekend… Soo cute and innocent. These are fleeting moments however, a few minutes here and there out of an entire week.

She doesn’t even know MJ has passed, to her he’s very much still alive (I have some questions coming my way don’t I?). I just tend not to think of MJ’s erm…” predilections” for the most part. Actually that’s not true, I do, I just don’t express them.

As for “Also, there is a sense of duty to tell the truth” that’s the key for me. To quote Matt Dillahunty “I want to believe as many true things as possible.” 🙂

Andreas

In the spirit of being diplomatic, michaelheffrey, perhaps you could clearify what you think of Michael potentially molesting Omer as a child? What is your clear stance on that?

If you are saying that Omer was molested as a child, and that that is morally wrong, but then turned into a legal consent “lover” as he crossed legal age, and then it was perfectly alright and dandy, you are making a confusing statement.

Now, I personally am still not convinced the sexual part of their relationship lasted. Usually for pedophiles their sexual interest stops when their victims comes into puberty. I’d reckon just their social connection lasted. If Michael was half smart and he wanted the boys to keep quiet about it when they got older he would make them dependent on him when he got older, so it would be more difficult to bite the hand that feeds.

https://youtu.be/BXnhF5tZtFI See Omer is still believed to be a son. 2014 whole family-only family members + Omer came to Gary Indiana to a fan meeting.Omer is very close with the kids though. You should watch.

yaso

What’s the deal with Lisa Marie Presley? was she that dumb, fool or what! i know how manipulative Michael was and how he was capable of brainwashing millions of people BUT Jordan chandler’ lawyer Larry Feldman in 1993 case was also Lisa Marie’ attorney at some point and Presley’ family friend, how didn’t she ask him?! Also her response when she was always asked in interviews was odd to say the least, though she maintained she didn’t see anything( Off course MJ wasn’t going to do anything in front of her!) she always said the only 2 people who knew anything are the people in the room, alluding that she wasn’t sure of Michael’ innocence! The thing is she had 2 kids of her own and allowed them around Michael all the time even when she continued her relationship with him for years after the divorce (with her kids around as well!) how any person with even 0.1% of suspicion jeopardize her kids’ like that? does she overlooked her own kids safety at the expense of her love/obsession with Michael? seriously i can’t make up my mind about Lisa!

Melissa

Hum I read somewhere that Lisa never wanted her kids alone with MJ. Maybe I’m wrong. But her answers about the molestation allegations yes, were strange! Then there was this strange news about her twitter account being hacked because retweeted a video about MJ being a molester.

I never knew MJ and Omer traveled so much together. Mind blowing! And his pic at the same age as Blanket! O.o

yaso

Guess who was Michael’ real date in this?!

Joost van Gijzen

You might make a good lawyer in the courtroom, but in the end you’d lose the case as you do not provide one single solid irrefutable piece of evidence.

This is your subjective view of MJ. Just look at the first photo you’ve posted: ‘nothing creepy here’. How is that objective? Answer: it’s not.

‘Rabbi Shmuley [had] warned Jackson after the Chandler scandal about keeping his behavior around children above board.’

He didn’t say that. And if all MJ did was sleep in the same room, then, not matter how strange it is (and yes, I think it’s strange too), MJ’s behaviour was ‘above board’.
By using those words, you want to imply things – again, not objective.

I could go on, but hopefully you get the idea.

Pea

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach did, in fact, tell Jacko not to be alone with children without another responsible adult present, i.e. no more sleepovers. It’s in his book “The Michael Jackson Tapes”, page 21:

“‘…And you can never be alone with a child that is not yours, again. Ever.’

Michael immediately agreed with me. He verbalized his commitment to never being alone with kids.”

Sorry, Joost — apparently Jacko reneged on his “commitment” with the Rabbi when was in bed with 7-year-old Juju Elatab in Summer 2003, hugging the boy closely to his body, as well as crawling onto Aaron Carter’s cot (while Aaron slept!) after inviting Aaron to sleep in his bedroom.

So, at the very least, it is “irrefutable” that someone had attempted to give Jacko good advice, and he chose not to follow it.

Pea

The choice of “above board” is appropriate; it accurately reflects what the Rabbi said — not sure where your complaint is coming from…. In his book, the Rabbi stated he suspected Jacko was guilty in 1993 (that he’d been “erotically obsessed” with Jordie Chandler) and that he “pitied” Jacko for the sorry state he was in (at the time, circa 2000, Jacko wanted to help children and Shmuley thought because of the scandal his reputation was in the toilet). It is from that context that the Rabbi gave Jacko the advice I quoted.

Again, “above board” is absolutely on the money.

Also, why are you correcting my word choice regarding Aaron Carter and Juju Elatab when you have no knowledge of either of them? Neither accused him of abuse, but Jacko was doing exactly as I described: he crept onto Aaron’s cot, Aaron woke up and asked him what he was doing, and Jacko apologized, “Oh I didn’t know, I didn’t know.” With Juju, they were in bed together during a sleepover, and Juju said Jacko was “just hugging” him. A boy one year older than Prince Jackson at the time.

For all of your complaining about objectivity, you are lacking in knowledge — so how would you know if this article is grossly biased?

Joost van Gijzen

How would I know? It’s called ‘comprehensive reading’.
How would someone crawl into a cot? Was MJ moving across the floor like a snake first? You would sit down on a cot.

Apart from that: not everybody has read all the books & articles on this, and memorized it all. Meaning: it would help if the author of this article put the rabbi’s words in context.

Again, all I’m saying is: if you’re making a case against someone refrain from tendentious formulations.

I’m a bit confused. I see lots of news sources seems to report this as groundbreaking news, and people are debating once again if Michael was pedophile or not, like this puts things in a new revealing light… but isn’t all this old news? What exactly is the news here?

Even in the 2005 trial the Boys Will Be Boys and its sisterbook was presented as evidence, and those were the most damning material they found, and all of his other adult material collection has been known for years too. The pdf file Radar Online has posted is 80 pages long, so perhaps its a lazy comment by me since I haven’t gone through it yet, but I’m confused what exactly is the news here? Correct me if I’m wrong.

Also, is it correct reporting to say its bluntly ‘child pornography’? Child pornography is illegal. Michaels material was all technically legal even if its books full of nude children, subtly implied sexualized positions and so on, as far I understood it anyway. No actual intercourse with children.

If he had books with pictures of animal sacrifices I’m confused too, because the Radar article seems to imply it was some kind of sick sexual fetish thing, since they mention it along with other sexual material? I’m not sold thats the only reason he could have owned books like that.

I own the dvds of Cannibal Holocaust and Viva La Muerte and they involve real animal cruelty/killings too, but I don’t own them for pornographical reasons. I was simply interested in those movies as artistic works, and wanted to see them uncensored. I really sort of question if he was really using pictures of dead or suffering animals to “desensitize” young children.

Neely

I didn’t think it was news either Andreas. I think they brought out 2003 documents (it’s stated right on them) and added a few of their own graphics (labeled 2016) from within those books, and called it breaking news. I just can figure out a motive. Is it because his death anniversary is this week? I’ve read the printed material in their ‘new findings’ already, long ago. It’s been public at least since I’ve been researching.

Michelle

I’m inclined to agree with you. I think ROL might have actually changed the pdf file linked to with the story, and removed some of the graphic images because they don’t appear to be there anymore. (I didn’t want to look at them so I skipped them and I did not feel comfortable saving something like that on my computer.) Most of it isn’t new. It was timed to coincide with the public interest there might be with the death anniversary. Now the story has spread to many other publications. It’s still creepy and disturbing but as we know, police did not find illegal child porn at Neverland. Borderline maybe but not anything he could be charged with. Vanity Fair claim:

‘A representative from the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department gave Vanity Fair the following statement regarding the documents:

Some of the documents appear to be copies of reports that were authored by Sheriff’s Office personnel as well as evidentiary photographs taken by Sheriff’s Office personnel interspersed with content that appears to be obtained off the Internet or through unknown sources. The Sheriff’s Office did not release any of the documents and/or photographs to the media. The Sheriff’s Office released all of its reports and the photographs as part of the required discovery process to the prosecution and the defense.’

Naomi

The most twisted part of that is whoever created the original file obviously sourced all these images that were meant to be evidence of Jackson’s perversion… It’s not something I want to test for myself, but I’m fairly confident you can’t find images like that just by doing a google search. “When you point one finger, there are three fingers pointing back to you.”

Michelle

At this point I am unsure where those images came from. I had thought that maybe the detectives photographed or photocopied sample pages from the books that were found. I would be interested in the view of someone who has thoroughly researched the case. Many pages are from the sheriff’s department but I have seem them before. And some pages were taken right off the Internet – you can tell from their layout. ROL have done a poor job reporting it but I don’t suppose they care, as long as they get visitors to their site. I have wondered if maybe they removed the pictures for being too graphic or disturbing.

Pea

It’s a damned shame…. All of this current hullabaloo was created by Radar Online to get “clicks”, as has been rightly suggested by Jacko’s Estate. In my opinion, the Estate should sue them for libel.

Michael Jackson hid a sinister house of horrors inside his infamous Neverland Ranch, stockpiling images of pornography, animal torture, S&M and gore in a bid to seduce innocent young boys. ….

“The documents exposed Jackson as a manipulative, drug-and-sex-crazed predator who used blood, gore, sexually explicit images of animal sacrifice and perverse adult sex acts to bend children to his will,” said the source.

“He also had disgusting and downright shocking images of child torture, adult and child nudity, female bondage and sadomasochism.”

All of that is twisted, and you wonder why Radar Online got it so wrong even though they had the documents and descriptions of the seized items right in front of them!

They specifically cite “Room To Play”, a book that I have personally seen while in my university’s library. There is no child torture or animal abuse in that book — none whatsoever. Jacko may have not been the kindest to his animals (Kimba the Lion, for instance, or Bubbles, according to Jane Goodall) and he may have been a pedophile, but he was not interested in “cruelty”.

“The pdf file Radar Online has posted is 80 pages long, so perhaps its a lazy comment by me since I haven’t gone through it yet”

I just checked and, unfortunately, the original 80+ page document is no longer available. That is the one full of images that Radar added themselves. Interesting…. Perhaps it was scrapped because the SBC Sheriff’s Dept came out and said that it was essentially falsified with content of “unknown origin” from the Internet.

The tragedy of all of this is that a legitimate discussion could’ve been had about the items a supposed innocent man-child owned, but it is now mired in false gossip about child pornography. Michael didn’t own child porn (or at least none was ever found), but he had copious amounts of child erotica. Not that Radar would be interested in the subtleties of that distinction.

They did the same nonsense when they said Wade Robson was “raped” in spite of the fact he articulated he believed he was a “willing participant”, i.e. not “raped” in the conventional sense of the word. But why think a tabloid could get anything right…. :/

Andreas

I don’t know for sure if Radar did report it literally as ‘child pornography’, but a lot of other newssources basing it on Radars article has certainly reported it as such. Even norwegians biggest newspaper has an article using the term in the headline; ‘child pornography’.

A lot of newssources are saying the same thing, saying something like: “a newssource(RadarOnline) has found a document revealing that Jackson owned piles of disturbing child pornography.” So at the very least Radar could be blamed for not making a clear distinction, and instead basing their writings on shock value.

And I see a lot of comments around saying things like “If he owned child pornography, and the police found it, why was he never charged with it?” Its a fair question, and sort of illustrates how exaggerations isn’t really helping.

Radar also have a source saying all this material is showing a “sadistic side” of Michael Jackson, which I’m a bit confused about, because none of the victims of Jackson has described that kind of behavior from him. I’m not sure why there’s a need to dehumanize Jackson into some vile depraved sadist or rapist. He was a ‘nice guy molester’, easily proved by how compliant most of his victims have been, and still are.

I suppose its still kosher to encourage lynch-mob mentality toward pedophiles. So the end justifies the means.

The direct (misleading) quote from Radar Online was “Jackson’s twisted porn collection — which included filthy photos and videos of men, women, boys and girls in perverted positions….” (I should’ve quoted that in the first instance!)

So, as we can see, they “implied” that there was child porn.

The only question that remains to me is just who is responsible for that ridiculous document. The Internet pages within it date to January, which hints at some kind of planning.

Over on Vindicate MJ, they are suggesting that ROL purposely removed page 3 which explicitly described the books “Room To Play”, “Underworld”, and “Drew and Jimmy” as not being child pornography. Seeing that they added that silly content about the Percocet addiction stemming from a sex addiction, I wouldn’t be surprised that they shaped it to look damning.

Also, they got Craig Bonner’s name wrong — Getty Images made the error but they copied it. Not sure why his picture was shown in the document anyway. To look like it was their “source close to the investigation” was doing lots of research?

The whole thing has crashed and burned….

(Apologies for the slow reply, by the way. :))

Andreas

Mmmh, and it actually does, much like Neely says, seem like they timed it for the anniversary of Michael Jacksons death. Who knows why.

This stuff about Michael perhaps molesting his nephews was news to me though. Stacy Brown really REALLY raised the stakes with that one. All of those nephews are still alive, so I’m sure lawsuits could easily could pend. Its not really that different from what Victor Gutierrez did. Stacy even takes time to list up all of Michaels nephews.

If Michael however really did send the nephew to an island for a while, and when the nephews was brought home he was pampered with gifts to keep him quiet, it sure sounds quite like the conspiracy plan with the Arvizos.

Difficult to know what to think.

ShawntayUStay

He’s talking about Jeremy Jackson, by the way. His mother, Margaret Maldonado, denied back in the 90s that Jeremy was ever molested, but then again, she loved Michael Jackson. But obviously someone within the family believes otherwise, according to Stacy Brown.

To’Shari

(I don’t know if Mjfacts have this already)http://radaronline.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mj-docs.pdf .This is what the Santa Barbara police report obtained.There are photos called “room to play”; on page 11, a little girl with a tie (noose) around her neck (R.Online also said there are other photos depicting children in S&M-Torture like images). This is the same guy who “sees god thru childrens’ eyes”. Mr. Peter Pan definitely had a very dark and twisted mind.

Michelle

I think this site already has much of that information and descriptions of it? But the file I am seeing from Radaronline.com is more than 80 pages and seems to include more graphic images, which I’m afraid I cannot look at. It’s very confronting though to see all this presented for real. One thing I do not get though – they are implying that he was taking Percocet for sex addiction? I thought it was primarily a painkiller so I may not be convinced about that. The rest though – abominable.

Neely

Percocet is a controlled prescription pain medicine. It bears it’s own very addictive qualities. I don’t remember seeing Percocet in any of the pics of his bedroom, or on the autopsy report, or any other documents, but I might have forgotten. His drug of choice was Demerol. In his bedroom was found versed, Valium, Xanax, propofol, and prednisone. No Percocet……that I recall.

If he was taking it somewhere along the line, I’d venture to say it was to feed a Percocet addiction rather than a sex addiction. That doesn’t even make sense honestly.

Pea

Neely, given that a variety of drugs (Demerol, Percocet, benzodiazepines like Xanax) were found in the 2003 raid of Jacko’s home, what’s your professional opinion on how his sex drive could’ve been functioning? Do you think it was active? I know opioids can cause sexual dysfunction in men….

That’s always been a question in my mind: beyond the fact he simply wasn’t as interested in Gavin Arvizo as he was with his typical “special friends”, the alleged molestation was around the time when he was heavily abusing pills. Jesus Salas said Jacko was frequently intoxicated — he served him booze but he could’ve been high on drugs, too.

What do you think?

As for sex addiction, after he died there was a story from the Daily Mirror claiming he was on Depo Provera injections. I doubt that’s true, though. I think ROL is simply making things up about a sex addiction.

Neely

I don’t know how Depo could treat any male for anything. It’s active drug is progestin and serves multiple duties in the female reproductive system. I would be hesitant to believe he received depo. I don’t know what purpose it would serve. I have not researched it in relation to sex addiction, however.

The effort of opiate pain killers isn’t just to dull the pain. It’s to simultaneously put you in a state of mind that although the pain may still exist, it’s not nearly as bothersome…. because you don’t care much. With that in mind, I’d say he probably didn’t care as much about sexual gratification as a normally functioning male of that age group. He had an incredibly high tolerance for benzodiazepines as was revealed in the Murray trial. I’ve given 1mg of ativan to restless, agitated people before, and they sleep all night and sometimes well into the next day. 2mg doses are approaching medically induced coma in a NORMAL person (although true coma would require more than one 2mg dose). He also had versed, which I’ve had prior to surgery. It was not used to induce a coma (in me), but to reduce pre op anxiety. I only got one dose, and after about 3 minutes my recall was entirely impaired. To this day, I have no memory of what took place after that injection. :o) And, I’m not complaining, haha!

One thing to consider, which I don’t entirely discount, is that Dr. Murray claimed Jackson was in active withdrawal from demerol, and Murray had no idea. I believe, based on Kleins records, that it’s very possible Murray was being truthful about that. If Michael was in active withdrawal, that suppresses sexual urges by leaps and bounds over any drug he was abusing. Active withdrawal involves illness and flu like symptoms, aches, depression, anxiety, severely impaired thought processes, etc. I don’t think any addict is thinking about sex in the midst of that.

It’s quite obvious from video footage that Jackson was loaded on many many occasions. He seemed to enjoy benzos more than opioids from what I’ve seen, save demerol. All that stuff he had injected on the day of his death is proof of that, plus bottles of oral benzos lying around his room. He could have been abusing percocet, darvocet, vicodin, who knows. I tend to believe if that were the case, and he was deeply dependent on it, it would have been right next to him in his room. An addict doesn’t let the drug of choice get far from his sight. There’s a modicum of comfort in just knowing it’s available at their disposal.

I wonder if Frank Tyson indulge(s) as well. I get the sense that it was a pill popping party at NL, where everyone is welcome to partake. So many different names on bottles, and such a wide array of drugs to choose from, and a pretty large volume to say the least.

All that said, I don’t really think Jackson was struggling with sex addiction nearly as much as he was substance addiction, and probably not at all. It’s a full time job to keep yourself in supply, sane, secret, along with all the juggling of names and doctors he had done. And, that ever present worry that it won’t be there when you need it. It’s all consuming. I doubt he was battling a sexual addiction in the midst of all that.

Pea

Thanks, Neely. 🙂

I was just wondering if in the midst of all of those pills and stabs of Demerol could he have even functioned sexually…. I remember one grotesque letter he wrote in 2003 requesting Buprenex; he claimed it was “less addictive” than Demerol but essentially gave the same high.

The Depo Provera story claimed Jacko was getting injections to curb his sexual desires for young boys. Depo Provera has been used for chemical castration. However, as I said before, I don’t believe that story for the simple reason that no doctor he was around (and the doctor dispensing the med was alleged to have been Dr. Farschian) cared enough about his issues.

This was all supposed to have happened in 2002-2003, thereabouts.

In a police report from 2004, his former bodyguard Christopher Carter said he didn’t like Dr. Farschian because he felt the doctor was giving Jacko too many medications, although there was a letter from Dr. Farschian about treating Jacko’s “D” addiction (Demerol). Frank Cascio liked him, though. Carter also said that the Cascio father, Dominic, said Jacko was popping 30-40 Xanax pills a day.

So, in that time, he was extremely drug-addicted. Can’t imagine he was able to do much of anything.

Neely

I was unaware that depo is used for chemical castration, but I think it’s a stretch to believe Jackson received it. I haven’t researched chemical castration much either, but isn’t it only used in extreme cases where convictions are abundant?

I’ve read conflicting stories about Farschian too. I want to say Frank claimed he was more of a holistic guy who was getting Jackson off drugs. But, in light of all the Dr. Feelgoods, it’s easy for me to entertain the idea that he was just another one in the lineup. And, this sort of coverup statement from Frank, might have been an effort to cover his own pill popping habit, supplied by Farschian. I know, that’s a bit of a stretch, but it did occur to me. I want to say Farschian was based in Miami? Why did Jackson need a holistic guy from across the country? Seemed more likely he needed an additional supplier on standby. Just a thought though….I’m not invested much in he idea.

The way you phrase these examples (‘close to his body’, ‘crawling’, ‘wile he slept’) are disturbing but ‘only’ if you look at it through ‘MJ is a predator’-eyes.

There is no other way to look at MJ, except that he was a predator. The reasons that he gave for having young boys in his bed night after night after night crumble easily, even under cursory scrutiny. Jackson had an unhealthy interest in boys and as time goes on more evidence of his predatory behavior has (and will) come to light.

Even if we want to accept that molestation did not occur, we would have to accept that MJ used boys for his own selfish purposes, using them to “recapture his lost childhood”, for comfort, to avoid facing adult responsibilities, or whatever. Once they reached a particular age he withdrew from them, leaving those boys hurt, confused and emotionally damaged because their “big best friend” didn’t return their calls or want to hang out with them any more. This has been recently expressed so eloquently by Sean Lennon.

“I was telling Les [Claypool] about it, and we were talking about song topics, and it just seemed like it fit in with the theme of trippy narratives that our record has. And I thought it’d be interesting to write about something that actually happened. It just felt right. I think I’d resisted much of my life talking about those kinds of stories, because they just seemed so hard to figure out how to translate them or relate them. And I just thought it was an interesting metaphor for what happened to a lot of Michael’s friends who were my age. It felt like there was something odd going on, and I still don’t know what it was. Nothing ever happened with me in an illegal way, but the whole place just felt like I was in some Peter Pan fantasy land. And there was a sense that when Bubbles got too old, he’d have to be gotten rid of, because chimpanzees turn into angry adults or dangerous adults. And it just felt like that was something I could relate to in terms of the whole situation out there. Because there was something Michael liked about hanging out with kids, because they’re so innocent and fun. Then, when you become an adult, it felt like you were a chimpanzee: too old to play with anymore.”

Whilst I personally believe Jackson was a child molester, you do not need to agree with me. However, it would be disingenuous to suggest that Jackson never hurt children, or for that matter always had their best interests at heart. At best he was an emotional predator, latching onto children who he thought could fill a hole in his soul (something they could never do by the way) and pushing them away once he had used them up. He was not a wonderful guy who was a great influence.

There is a great thought experiment about deciding that the children’s book character Noddy is in fact the Creater of the Universe – within a few weeks you’ll see evidence for this ridiculous belief eveywhere….

What is this crazy non-sequitur? It has nothing to do with Michael Jackson molesting boys.

Don’t pretend for a moment that children were “lucky” to have been one of Jackson’s special friends.

Joost van Gijzen

This crazy non-sequitur has to do with your “MJ is guilty!”-colored glasses.

Last week we got leaked police info about the Neverland raid. Art books with (partly) naked people – men, women, children. First reaction in the media: pornography! Normal people’s reaction: art.
Yes, it could be used for ‘grooming’, as one detective stated. And for people wearing “MJ is guilty!”-colored glasses, it’s all the evidence that’s needed.

There is another way to look at MJ, you just don’t want to do it.
Do I think having children over night after night is unhealty? Sure. Could he be a child molester? Sure. Have I seen definite evidence for it. Nope.

Michelle

I would just like to say thank you for this site, you sure have a lot of information here. When I first came across it I assumed it was another of those MJ defenders sites. But it’s great that someone is trying to take an objective viewpoint. Michael Jackson was such a divisive figure. Most studies I have seen on this issue seem to fall into one of two categories – blind MJ worshipers, who don’t want to admit any fault about him. Or it’s the full on haters who let their emotions (though understandable) dictate the discussion. I am in my forties now, I remember the release of Thriller very well and I listened to it back then often. My tastes changed as I got older and I didn’t follow his later work. When he died, I think I felt a brief flash of nostalgia for the Thriller era. But it was more about that time in my life I think than my real feelings about MJ. No star is perfect, and many of them have their eccentricities, but something I can’t overlook is child molestation.

He certainly had extreme popularity at one point, and I can admit that was a talented entertainer. But looking back now, I do think that his legacy is somewhat overrated. Yes he brought in these big budget music videos and helped start off the MTV era. The value of that though may be a questionable one. In the 80s we started getting so hung up on the looks of the artists, rather than their actual musical product. Many of the things he was credited with pioneering he had actually picked up from elsewhere. Many people were doing the ‘Moonwalk’ before he popularized it. As a songwriter – his songs with social observation in them in no way matched those of John Lennon or Bob Dylan.

What really annoys me is when people say ‘But Jordan Chandler admitted he lied after MJ died!’ No, he did no such thing. It was such an obvious hoax but MJ fans still seem to believe it and even his family has tried to say it was real when it wasn’t.

For those who have grown up with the Internet and social media, it feels a bit difficult to explain what it was like before that period. There is more information now with the Internet. But the quality falls very short of the quantity.

My best friend is actually a huge MJ fan! We are opposites on this issue. She says that if she had been a US resident she would’ve been among the fans showing MJ support at his court trial. I don’t understand how someone can still feel this way, when she seems quite rational in other areas. But I guess that’s the way it goes – a lot of people probably had a lot invested in MJ. But it was all a myth and after Michael Jackson, I made up my mind I would never again put another celebrity on that type of pedestal.

I think though that some of his core base may be waking up and asking themselves more questions. In Australia and the UK, the high level of pedophilia in the entertainment industry has been exposed (in the UK the statute of limitations isn’t the same as the USA). I am hopeful that eventually there will be a similar accounting for in the Hollywood entertainment industry. But we are talking about some very powerful individuals.

It is at times very painful to learn the truth – many of the worst culprits were considered family entertainment, and some were given public honors. But at the end of the day I would rather the truth be exposed than children continue to suffer in a system that exploits them and a culture that enables and covers it up.

Kat

My belief is that Michael Jackson is fascinating, because he’s so polarasing. Some think that he was a musical genius and a spectacularly kind human being (who was unfortunately accused of committing unspeakable crimes). Others think he was something of a monster, harmed children he claimed to love, was a criminal who escaped justice, and was a mediocre, overrated artist.

I also sometimes wonder what his legacy will ultimately be, as one can’t be remembered as being both of those.

Leanna Ramcharan

Were you in the room when it happened? You saw it happen right?

Pea

Leanna, this isn’t a very enlightened response. Yes, none of us were in the room with Jacko, but that includes you and other Jacko supporters who seem “certain” Jacko could never become aroused by the many attractive boys with whom he repeatedly and compulsively shared his bed. However, you have had five of them who did say something happened, and because they have insights into Jacko’s behavior that we lack, we can judge their credibility and come to a conclusion.

Your questions are fallacious, too. Having not seen anything ourselves doesn’t mean it didn’t happen either. Again, we have to defer to the parties who were present.

Anything else you have to add?

Wade Robson Allys

No Leanne I was not but the VICTIMS were. MJ has seven accusers two known settlements, another VICTIM who had checks totaling over 900,000 and letters which are beyond inappropriate. One accuser who accurately described the underside of MJ’S genitals, my sources are on record. A predator who discussed how he shares his bed with unrelated children on various media outlets. A defense witness in 2005 who discussed how her brother spent over 300 nights in MJ’S bed. Another accuser who was taken out of school and brought on tour and shared a bed with Michael Jackson during the whole tour. Another accuser 12 at the time who dates back to 1979 who states that MJ was masturbation on the phone while talking to him. Another accuser who was questioned by law enforcement, psychiatrists, therapists, etc. All said he was credible. MJ’S own defense attorney Carl Douglas who said the pictures and description by the first accuser was the 600-pound gorilla in the room and they knew that they had to silence the child to prevent a criminal trial. Books found in a locked filing cabinet with pictures of semi nude and nude pictures of young boys that were edited by pedophiles. These books also had inscriptions praising it’s contents. If we can’t say that these men/woman deserve their day in court after all this info. than we have utterly failed VICTIMS of abuse

Leanna Ramcharan

I’ve seen interviews with Wade Robson, his stories have always changed on that incident. Michael has been in the music business for so many years and no one experienced this with him, but in the 90’s people falsely accused him for his money, there were tapes and everything. Some of the accusations in the court room were ridiculous, but in all that he was found not guilty…the guy had been married at least twice in his lifetime and had girlfriends..spoke out at an award show and a tape trying to say he didn’t do it..How would you feel if you were falsely accused for something you didn’t do? And if the kids were ‘molested’ and the parents were outraged, why would they allow them to be there in the first place continuously? There are kids who hung out with Michael almost everyday and grew up around him such as Omer and Macaulay and never ever had that problem with him, EVER. Michael even had his own kids and they love him to death. Who are you to pick on someone you don’t know, or to speak out on a case that you do not know the details of? Those kids who claimed to be molested loved hanging out with Michael, but the guy is dead now, let him RIP. There are bigger issues in this world today.

Leanna Ramcharan

I do not know the truth, neither do you..only God knows..we cannot judge on something we do not know. Aside all of this, the guy was talented. Bickering about this situation won’t matter since the guy suffered with depression and is now dead. No matter what you try to prove, it DOES NOT MATTER.

silverspirit

Yes, we know MJ was a child molester. Court docs and payoffs speak volumes. God has nothing to do with it. It very much matters. You think child abuse doesn’t matter? Oh my!

Wade Robson Allys

No Leanne it does not matter to You but it does matter to the VICTIMS OF MJ, WHY? Because their history has been rewritten in a very public way by the Michael Jackson Machine that not only includes his fanatical fans but lawyers, p.r. firms, msm media and a whole group of others looking to save the money making machine from crumbling down. Throughout time human atrocities are minimized and downplayed. However when the victims/survivors of these events speak loudly and use the justice system to be heard than history is not allowed to be forgotten. When OJ Simpson brutally murdered two individuals and than was found not guilty in a criminal trial. The Browns and the Goldmans could of given up and moved on. Using your logic what difference would it have made both Nicole and Ron the victims were dead. It wouldn’t bring them back. However the father of Ron Goldman was not going to allow history to be white washed in favor of a famous, popular, wealthy athelete. He was going to fight for both his son and Nicole to receive some form of justice. Do you realize that a great deal of the Goldman’s legal costs were covered by small donations from average citizens. The MJ case is no different. Wade, James Jason Jane, Terry, Gavin and Jordan have a right to set history straight and I applaud them for doing so.

NaturalWoman

What woud you do for a Billion dollars? I’m just curious?

NaturalWoman

Money! The root of all evil! Let me dig up some dirt on Elvis!

Michael Jeffrey

Elvis? Good idea to bring him up. Do you notice that Elvis was even richer and more successful than MJ back in his days? Yet, Presley was never accused of a single crime. How easy it would have been to get money from Elvis… Same for all other legendary singers…some private scandals yes, accused of horrible crimes? No! Or can you think of any other than MJ? How come he was accused multiple times of sex crimes then? BTW, you could have easily accused Elvis, Mick Jagger, Kurt Cobain and others of raping women… Yet no woman ever accused a rock idol of rape even though most of them surrounded themselves with grouphies. How come only MJ if money is the root of all evil and not maybe pedophilia?

NaturalWoman

Right! I’m reading these old comments and all these people want MJ to be this bad person so badly! SMH no wonder why MJ wanted to be left alone. This is such a cruel cruel world.

Pea

I really think it depends on what Jacko was using, which is why that question is an interesting one.

The Prosecution argument — and, indeed, the conventional wisdom — was, “If he was high, did he know what he was doing when he climbed in bed with young boys?” But some drugs suppress sexual functionality, not to mention there may be little interest in anything else when your main goal is to score a high.

So, while dangling one’s infant son over a balcony might be the kind of judgment lapse expected of a drug addict, engaging in sexual activity with young boys (at least as charged) would require both the mental desire and the physical ability to perform.

For instance, the cops found cocaine on his underwear. It hadn’t been metabolized and was merely the powder. Cocaine is a stimulant, and I have wondered if he was on cocaine in the scene in the Bashir documentary when he was feeding Blanket. He looked quite frenetic, in my opinion. Or maybe he was on a methamphetamine….

Oh Pea, I have wondered that very same thing in that footage! Even after several espressos I can’t do that with my leg, lol! He is definitely agitated.

Michelle

Ephedrine – which is a stimulant – was reportedly found in his system when he died. A documentary about his autopsy theorized that he was taking stimulants to improve his performance during the rehearsals for his tour. But it could have contributed to his insomnia, and so he was taking a lot of sedatives as well. It’s the upper downer cycle. That was at the time of his death anyhow.

Neely

That’s right Michelle. I had forgotten about ephedrine in his urine. It wasn’t noted in his blood or other tissue. And, I don’t think it was found in his home. That suggests to me that he wasn’t completely committed to it, but who knows for sure. We can easily conclude he was committed to downers of all sorts. :-/. Maybe an occasional dose to get over the hangovers from all the benzos?? And to perform better. The man almost had to have something to perform with all the other drugs in his system, and no sleep. What a terrible viscous cycle that turns into….and I believe he was up to his neck, at least in downers.

Michelle

I do think that in his home they found some pills containing a mixture of ephedrine, caffeine and aspirin. It was in an unmarked bottle. But yes he seemed mainly hooked on downers. I also used to wonder if all the drugs may have affected his fertility. Anyway, Andreas must have saved the original document that ROL posted and has provided it below – thank you Andreas! It would be interesting to know what the owner of this site thinks of the entire document. In the meantime, ROL is continuing to post more articles about the infamous raid.

Neely

That’s entirely possible about the unmarked bottle of ephedrine. I just don’t remember it. My eyes were probably bugged out at all the benzos they found. 😀